


A Coin to a Cat

by SourFox



Series: Luck Exists in the Leftovers [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anbu Hatake Kakashi, Hunter-nin Iruka, Japanese Mythology & Folklore, M/M, Misuse of Mythology, world expansion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-17
Updated: 2016-04-25
Packaged: 2018-05-21 08:27:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6044847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SourFox/pseuds/SourFox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Iruka is a man of many secrets, and more than few try to leave the closet when he gets assigned to a joint mission with Team Ro. He could only pray that nothing would go amiss, but what plan ever goes perfectly?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Reassignment

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know how this happened. I really don't. It just happened. This will be updated sporadically because most of this story is still being drafted out and I'm constantly changing things.

Iruka crouched down and looked at the forgotten roadside shrine. It had been a while since he had come across one. It was simple, as roadside shrines were. It was nothing more than a crumbling, moss-covered stone statue with a few forgotten and cracked sake cups and bowls at its lotus-shaped base. Gently, he pulled off some of the moss that had consumed the statue. A gentle, kind face emerged between the patches of moss. From what he could see, he guessed it was a statue of Senju Kannon – the modern and only interpretation that remained of the Rabbit Goddess. Many of the statues forty-two arms were missing, but a dozen or so of them were still intact. The Land of Fire was littered with abandoned shrines, not just small roadside shrines, but larger complexes as well. It was not uncommon to find shrines to Senju Kannon outside of the Fire Country, but he didn't expect to find one this deep into the Land of Hot Water where the remains of the cult of Jashin operated.

Iruka blew out the dust from one of the cups and quickly wiped it as clean as he could manage. He did the same with a bowl. He put them back down and took out his water bottle and tore off a piece his dried meat from his pouch. He filled the cup and broke the dried meat into smaller pieces to fit into the bowl. It wasn't the grandest of offerings, but it was more than what the shrine had been offered for years.

 Iruka put his hands together in prayer and asked for Kannon to oversee his journey so that he would make it back to the village safely. They were hollow words. He respected the ideals of Senju Kannon and nothing more. He did it more out of a sense of duty more than anything else. He looked down at the mask listlessly staring up at the sky next to him. The mask was white with red swirling designs painted on as the eyebrows and more along the jaw to inspire thoughts of a red mane. It was one of the most recognised masks that existed between the ANBU and the hunter-nin corps. Komainu, the lion dog, stared up at the sky.

Two sides of the same coin echoed in his mind. Iruka could still remember the first day his father had used that phrase. It had taken him a while to understand it, but now he used it to his best ability. Komainu and Umino Iruka were two sides of the same coin, wholly different but one in the same. He sighed and took in a deep breath. The forest smelt different than the one in and around Konoha. He wanted to enjoy it a little longer as Iruka. 

A sharp bark echoed through the forest. A series of bird calls sounded not too long after. The ANBU team had arrived. Iruka took the mask in hand and put it on. He answered with the bird call used amongst ANBU and waited. He stayed crouched in front of the shrine. He put his hands together in prayer again. It was not to Senju Kannon he prayed, and it was not for safety he asked, but for patience to see through his mission with the ANBU team. He wasn't overly fond of ANBU, or particularly good at teamwork. He was a hunter-nin that worked best alone. That was how all hunter-nin corps operated. ANBU, while notorious for assassinations and doing unnamed dirty work for the sake of the village, relied on teamwork.

 Iruka hated joint operation missions. He had only been a part of the hunter-nin corps for a year and he had already completed more joint operations than any other current hunter-nin. Joint operations weren't all that common, but if one appeared, Iruka was always involved. What he hated more than joint operations was being assigned to a new mission while he was on his journey back to Konoha from his current mission. Iruka had originally left the village to hunt down a pair of chūnin that had fled, and managed to get all the way to the border. He killed them and disposed of their bodies, but leaving their heads as proof of the mission's completion. Before Iruka started on his way back to the village, he got a missive from the Sandaime ordering him to join an ANBU team in the Land of Hot Water.  

"I wouldn't have pegged you as the religious type, Komainu."

Iruka ignored Inu. He finished his prayer and stood up. He had worked with Team Ro twice before, and he preferred them over the other teams. The captain, Inu was an exceptional ANBU, and the sex was good. He wondered if they would get the chance to step away from the rest of the team. Quietly, he stood up and turned around. Inu was the only one there.

"Where's the rest of your team?" Iruka asked, even if he already knew the answer.

"Maa, I might have told them to wait while I retrieved you." Inu got closer. He was within arm's length of Iruka. "We won't have much time to slip away once we start the mission."

"So," Iruka whispered, "you thought you'd pull me aside now? What if I'm not in the mood?" 

Iruka liked to imagine that Inu was giving him a lazy smirk to match the one on his dog mask. Inu got closer still. Iruka looked up at him. There was almost half a head's height difference between them, but Iruka didn't mind, he still had time for one more growth spurt.

"I'll have to do something about that, won't I?" Inu reached out and brushed down Iruka's arm. The metal claws of that gloved hand ghosted over his skin, leaving behind a pleasurable ticklish sensation.

Iruka had a smirk on his lips. He knew Inu couldn't see it, but he was feeling naughty. Inu moved in closer, one hand on Iruka's neck, and the other had fingers hooked in the waistband of his pants. He tripped Inu and used the man's grip on his neck to let him go down with him, but Iruka landed on top of him. He noticed that Inu had raked his hand down his arm during the fall. Inu's metal claws broke Iruka's skin, but the cuts were shallow.

Iruka still had a smirk on his lips. He straddled Inu's waist and squeezed his thighs to the man's sides. He was surprised when he felt that Inu was already aroused.

"Oh, what's this?" Iruka felt giddy. "I thought you were supposed to get me in the mood. You might be too far ahead for me to catch up."

Inu let out a moan as Iruka rolled his hips. Inu quickly removed his gloves and gauntlets. Iruka watched as the ANBU undid the fastening on the side of his armoured vest. Inu only undid it enough for him to slide his hand under Iruka's armour and shirt.

Iruka let out a quiet hum as Inu rolled a nipple between his fingers. He rolled his hips harder down onto Inu's erection. He was satisfied that that resulted in a slight twist on his nipple. Iruka didn't like pain as a part of sex. He believed that it was an intimate thing, but at that moment, he was Komainu, the opposite side of the coin. A little pain never killed anyone. It was arousing, in a spur of the moment kind of way.

"It seems like your catching up just fine," Inu said.

Iruka smiled at that. He forgot how cheeky Inu was. Most of the time when they had sex, it was post-mission, so it was used as an outlet and a grounding technique. There was never really a lot of talking involved in post-mission sex.

"I don't think I'm quite there yet," Iruka whispered. "You'll have to put a little more effort into this."

"Huh." Inu sounded bemused.

Iruka felt Inu lift his hips before to give a thrust against him before the ANBU used the momentum to force him off. Iruka went along with it. Inu shot up and gripped Iruka's shoulder to use as a pivot to move him behind the other man. The ANBU stretched out his legs to encircle Iruka.

"Then how about this?" Inu whispered in Iruka's ear. Inu slipped his one hand under Iruka's clothes again and undid his zipper with the other. Inu firmly applied pressure to Iruka's covered cock. "I think this counts as a ‘little more effort', but I feel like doing a bit more."

Iruka heard his breath hitch. He wanted to close his eyes and just let himself be pleasured, but he was on a mission in the middle of a foreign country. He kept his eyes open. Inu started stroking him through his underwear. He needed something stare at if Inu would be behind him the entire time. His eyes landed on that statue of Senju Kannon. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he knew that jerking off, or even having sex, if it progressed that far, in front of the shrine was disrespectful. Iruka found that he didn't care, not when he had a hand pressed against his cock.

Fuck you Rabbit Goddess, Iruka thought.

Iruka let out a sharp breath when Inu pulled down his underwear as best he could. It wasn't a very comfortable position, not when both of them had all their armour on. He knew that Inu had at least removed his gloves and gauntlets.  Iruka really battled to keep his eyes open when Inu wrapped his hand around his cock. The hand was lubed.

"You keep lube in your pouch?" Iruka asked.

"Of course," Inu replied as if it was a normal thing to do.

Iruka didn't have the attention span to query that any further. Inu was busy pressing his thumb in lazy circles on the head of his cock. Iruka didn't want a lazy hand job. He didn't know how to prompt Inu into speeding up. He noticed that the hand that had been under his clothes was gone. He had an idea as to where it went. His theory was proven correct when he felt knuckles brush over his ass in a lazy stroke.

Iruka reached back and curled his hand around the back of Inu's neck. He used it as leverage to help shift himself back. Ah, he thought. He could feel every movement Inu made as he stroked himself. He was slightly disappointed that they wouldn't progress to sex, but then again, he didn't know how long the rest of Team Ro would wait for them.

The movement of Inu's knuckles and the strokes on his own cock picked up. Iruka was glad Inu was starting to go with a pace he liked. Their position wasn't that bad once he got used to it. Iruka liked that he had some of Inu's hair caught between his fingers. He experimentally tightened his grip. Inu let out a throaty breath that was almost a moan.

Iruka thought he had the upper hand when Inu gave him a quick twist. He had to stop himself from drawing up his knees. He liked that. He kept his eyes on the statue. Iruka could feel a familiar heat collect between his legs and at the pit of his stomach. He was close. From what he could tell, Inu wasn't that far behind either, but that was just guesswork from how fast the man was jerking himself off.

The organism was a quick and potent one that flowed to every nerve in his body. Unfortunately, it died down just as quickly. Iruka kept his grip on Inu's hair until he heard the man groan as he came. He sat forward and pulled a cloth from under his vest. He wiped himself off as best he could. Without looking back, he threw the cloth behind him for Inu to use.

"I see I'm not the only one that's prepared," Inu joked. 

Iruka rolled his eyes. He tucked himself back into his underwear and stood up. He pulled his clothing right and started refastening his vest. He looked over his shoulder and saw that Inu was doing the same.

"Do you still have the missing-nin heads on hand?" Inu asked. Iruka was amazed at how the man could joke and play and then become serious within the blink of an eye. "I can have a ninken deliver it for you."

"There's no need," Iruka informed him. "I've already sent the scroll to Konoha through means of my own. The heads should arrive before they start to decompose too badly, but you have something to give me, don't you?"

Inu nodded and took a scroll from his pouch and handed it over. The scroll contained the mission directive, written by the Hokage himself. Iruka undid the string binding and opened the scroll. Most of the joint operation missions were the same – ANBU needed help with the tracking of specific persons, and the most skilled trackers were all hunter-nin. Some missions weren't that simple, and as Iruka read, he got the impression that his new mission was a complicated one. Once he finished reading, he swiped his thumb over the last kanji and the scroll crumbled in his hands.

Iruka was happy to see it combust into flames. He couldn't believe the Hokage wanted to send him along with ANBU on an infiltration and assassination. The Sandaime had assigned him a separate, secret mission, which he could have done without a team of ANBU hovering over him.

"Do you have a secure location ready?" Iruka asked.

"Of course, just follow me," Inu said.

Inu leapt up into a tree. Iruka stared after them. He hated tree running. He had no chakra. Tree running was difficult without chakra, but he managed to get around well enough through other means. That was another reason why he liked working alone. He knew that ANBU operatives were very nosy bastards. Inu was a prime example. He didn't want someone like Inu catching on to that bit of information.

"Kikikiki."

Iruka let out a groan. He wondered if it was a good idea to summon okuri inu as often as he did. He relied on them too much, but their non-physical bodies were useful. Iruka sighed and went back to the Senju Kannon shrine and knelt before it again. He made the motions to make it look like he was praying again. He knew that Inu was out of earshot, so he didn't have to worry about being overheard.

"You completed your job," Iruka said. "If you keep behaving like this, I'll summon the Ri clan instead."

A low growl spread around him. Iruka knew he was surrounded, all he needed to do was look up and he would see that the okuri inu had encircled him.

"Those flea ridden kitsune are lazy. They do nothing but drink sake all day long. They play petty tricks and they prattle endlessly. They don't know what is to strike fear into prey once it gives chase. We know. We know how to make their hearts flutter with fear, uncertainty. To us the prey is everything. You set out the prey, and we hunt it down. We of the Chi clan have done everything you have asked of us."

Iruka let out a quick, steadying breath and looked up. He looked up and saw a large spectral wolf float over the shrine, looking down at him. Black wisps of the wolf's body flaked off and disappeared, not unlike a flame would flicker and dance. Iruka looked into the wolf's eyes.

"I know that Kōichi," Iruka said, his voice low, "but lately, the okuri inu have lingered after I have given them the signal to dismiss them. I know others can't see you, but you can't impede my missions. If this behaviour continues, I'll wipe the Chi name from my book."

Kōichi snarled and moved his from side to side, looking over his brethren. Iruka could hear a few whines. So, it was the pups, Iruka thought.

"I was not aware of this," Kōichi said. "Most of the Chi clan is made up of young. The only prey they have if what you offer us. They don't know about the pain of being on the brink of being forgotten. To them, you are a companion, not the bearer of our name. Naturally, they are infatuated with you. I will see that they are dealt with, but I expect you to continue using the Chi clan. If I find that you've been using the Ri clan to do what you summon us to do, you'll regret it."

Iruka watched as Kōichi disappeared into a black mist. He looked over his shoulder and saw that the rest of the okuri inu disappeared as well. He was about to stand back up, but he saw that Inu stood in a nearby tree, watching him. With a sigh, he leapt up into the nearest tree and followed and fell into the rear position.

Sharp barks echoed throughout the forest again and the leaves of the forest floor bushes rustled. Iruka looked down and caught a glimpse of a white tail. He frowned. He knew which okuri inu that was. It was a young one, barely ten years old called Tomiichi. He hoped Kōichi could call them all back, otherwise, he would make good on his threat if Tomiichi insisted on following him.

"What was that?" Inu asked.

"Foxes are common here," Iruka informed. It was a lie, but what Inu didn't need to know wouldn't hurt them. It was the okuri inu, but thankfully, it was their parting calls. "It's close to the mating season, so you'll be hearing a lot of that."

"Oh."

A silence fell over them. Iruka wouldn't say it was tense, but it wasn't comfortable either. They just didn't work together often enough to be able to function without communication or have enough trust in the other's ability. He knew, and they knew it too. They dropped out of the trees and entered a cave. The entrance was narrow, and Iruka had his back and chest pressed against the rock and he worked his way through. The rock parted and revealed a wooden house.

It looks new, Iruka thought. He saw a crevice in the rock. He took out a slip of chakra paper covered in symbols and slipped it into the crevice. It was unlikely that any of the ANBU would notice it. He followed Inu into the house and up to the second storey.

Inu went to the window and looked out, his back to Iruka. He noticed that there were two other ANBU in the room. He knew of Tora, he had worked with him before, and although the man was pleasant enough to get along with, he didn't like the wood style jutsu. It was too difficult for him to coordinate his attacks with. He didn't recognise the other ANBU.

"I see you have a new member," Iruka said. "I'm Komainu of the hunter-nin corps."

"I'm Neko. I look forward to working with a member of hunter-nin corps."

Iruka looked to Inu, who inclined his head. He was uncertain about working with a child, but if Inu had accepted him into his team, Iruka wasn't about to oppose him. He didn't think it was right to allow children into ANBU, but it wasn't his place to disagree.

"There's no need to be so formal with Komainu," Inu said with a wave of his hand. "He's practically a part of Team Ro."

"Senpai," Tora carped.

Iruka knew where Inu was going with that line of conversation. He should have prayed for more patience to deal with Inu, not the team as a whole.

"So, you still haven't given me a reply from the last time I asked," Inu said, ignoring Tora's warning. "Will you leave the hunter-nin corps and join ANBU?"

"No," Iruka answered immediately. His answer had always and will always be the same. He had no interest in joining ANBU. He was satisfied with his current position. He had also heard through the grapevine that he was up for a promotion to squad captain. Even if he wanted to switch divisions, it would be stupid to do so when he was about to get a promotion. "How many times must I reject your proposal?"

Inu titled his head in a way that looked bemused with the lazy grinning expression of his mask. "I'll ask as many times as it takes to change your mind. You're potential is wasted as a hunter-nin."

"Senpai, that's enough," Tora tried to stop Inu, but it didn't have much effect. "Please don't take Inu-taichō seriously. We appreciate all your hard work."

Iruka crossed his arms. Sometimes he wondered if Inu wanted him in ANBU for the sole reason of being closer so that they could become fuck buddies. He wouldn't put it past the man, but he wanted the mission over with as soon as possible.

"Do you have a plan?" Iruka asked. He hoped it wasn't anything elaborate. Elaborate plans had to be built on teamwork, which they didn't have.

"Not entirely," Inu said with his back still turned. "I don't know why you were assigned to us, but the Sandaime ordered it. I opposed it. I often tell you that you have the potential to be ANBU, but at this moment in time, you're a hunter-nin with no ANBU training. I don't know of what use you'll be on this mission."

Iruka knew it wasn't an insult, but it was a change from the man who hounded about his wasted potential. He hoped that the Sandaime knew what he was doing. He could've completed the mission himself without the need to involve ANBU. He was confident in his abilities, but he didn't know how he would be able to keep his mission a secret from Team Ro. Nowhere in the mission directive did the Sandaime demand he keep his mission a secret from them. Iruka didn't even consider disclosing his mission to them as an option. What reason did they have to believe that a Shiba Nao was possessed? Most people thought things such as ayakashi as old wives' tales. He never understood how people could accept talking summoning pact animals, but readily dismiss ayakashi as a fantasy.

They no longer had a reason to keep believing, so they forgot, Iruka told himself. He stopped his line of thought. He tried to think of something more relevant that wouldn't end up depressing him. He needed time to gather more supplies before they started the mission. He didn't have any food pills with him, and he doubted anyone on Team Ro thought of bringing an extra ration of them for him. He didn't know if he had the right equipment to help the ANBU, let alone complete his mission.

Inu turned around and looked Iruka in the eye. It wasn't every day he had to look the Sharingan head on. He was thankful he didn't have to.

"The first part of our mission is infiltration," Inu said. He was addressing everyone present. "Shiba Yūdai, the clan leader of the Shiba who happens to be closely related to the Land of Hot Water's Daimyō, is suspected of harbouring missing-nin and selling weapons on the black market. There is no evidence yet, so it's our mission to infiltrate the castle and gather evidence."

Iruka stayed quiet. Dealing with missing-nin was something he could do, but then again, it was something Team Ro could also do on their own. He knew for a fact that ANBU knew the basics of how to dispose of a body. His skills weren't really needed. Iruka guessed that the Hokage had made it a joint operation because both missions would take place within the same vicinity and time frame. It would be a disaster if his mission when wrong and the ANBU got caught in the crossfire.

"Once we have gathered sufficient evidence, we're free to deal with the Shiba clan." Inu stepped back and leant against the wall. "Getting into the castle will be our first obstacle. Naturally, Shiba Yūdai is very suspicious and he is also reported to be superstitious. We'll need to pick our method of infiltration carefully because it might take months to get this right." Inu put his hand on the bottom of his mask and pulled it up. "That's why I think we should all get to know each other a little better first."

Iruka was surprised at how readily Inu took off his mask. It was common practice for a hunter-nin to know the identity of other hunter-nin, and Iruka was sure that ANBU did the same, but identities weren't shared between the divisions. He frowned behind his mask. Inu had removed his ANBU mask, but he wore cloth mask over his face, but that was enough to give his identity away as Hatake Kakashi.

Tora did the same though Iruka had no idea who he was, even without his mask. The face plate, square jaw and dark eyes didn't ring any bells. Neko took off his mask next. The face of Uchiha Itachi looked up to Iruka. It wasn't all that surprising, he had heard the rumours, and really, how many other eleven-year-olds were currently qualified to join ANBU? He only knew of one. He now knew their identities, but he couldn't afford to think of them as anyone other than the ANBU of Team Ro, but it was difficult.

"Senpai," Tora chided.

"Oh, I forgot, sorry." Kakashi –no, Inu– pulled down the cloth mask. "Happy?"

Iruka didn't want to take off his mask. He knew it was selfish, because even the great Hatake Kakashi, who was famous for his masked appearance now stood before him with his face bare for all to see. Iruka never thought that Kakashi had mole by his mouth. He wanted to sigh. Once he took his mask off, he knew he wouldn't even get sex out of the mission, not even post mission.

"Well?" Inu prompted.

Iruka took a deep breath and held it in for a moment. He released it and pulled off his mask. He wasn't high ranking, nor was he well-known, but he had liked the anonymity that the hunter-nin corps offered. He looked up and saw that Inu and Tora didn't look impressed while Neko looked indifferent.

"You're that chakra dead genin that made it through the Exams," Inu said.

Iruka hoped Team Ro hadn't seen the Exams. The mission was now third on his Top Five Worst Missions list. On the bright side, Inu might get off my back about transferring, he thought. The upside was that now he didn't need to pretend to cast ninjutsu, but the downside was that Inu wouldn't proposition him later. The mission suddenly seemed a lot worse.

"You've been a hunter-nin about a year now," Inu said.

"I have." It was all Iruka could think of. What was there to say to them? What answer would make them understand, but at the same time not reveal much of anything? He only had a handful of breadcrumbs to toss and could he only hope that Inu would follow the trail. "You know that there was a shortage in the hunter-nin corps last year."

 "That's true," Tora said to no one in particular.

"A shortage is one thing, but recruiting a genin is something else entirely," Inu said bitterly. "What was the Sandaime thinking? He recklessly endangered you."

Iruka let out a laugh. He couldn't help it; it slipped out on its own. "Of all the things you could accuse the Sandaime, you go with reckless endangerment?"

"I can't watch over you during this mission," Inu said.

Iruka felt all his merriment wash from him. He knew that it was unorthodox to recruit a genin into the hunter-nin corps, but he was chosen for a reason, and he had survived as a hunter-nin for a year. He was confused about how he wanted to handle the situation. He wanted to assure Inu that wasn't a feeble new chūnin, but he didn't want him asking too much after his abilities. He wasn't about to reveal his clan's secrets to strangers. 

"I don't need or want you to," Iruka said. "You've worked with me before, so I'll just need you to trust me. I also have a mission to complete, and I can't do it with you looking over my shoulder the whole time."

"I've worked with you before, yes, but I was under the impression you were a sensory-type capable of concealing your chakra. You're chakra dead. You can't just rely on taijutsu to deal with missing-nin."

"Senpai," Tora said. "I've worked with Komainu as well, and he never needed our assistance before."

"Look, if it really bothers you, you should take it to the Sandaime," Iruka said. He wanted nothing more than to punch Inu in the face or kick him in the gut. They were wasting time. They needed a plan to get into the castle, and they wouldn't come up with one while they were arguing about his capabilities to complete the mission. "I was assigned to Team Ro in this joint operation for a reason. Have a little faith in the Sandaime."

Iruka knew he was being a hypocrite because he didn't know what the old man was thinking either.

"Fine," Inu said, although it sounded as though it was reluctantly done so. "I'll let it go for now if you agree to stand before the Hokage when I request an investigation into the circumstances of your recruitment as a hunter-nin."

Iruka looked Inu in the eye. He knew it was a stupid thing to do when facing the Sharingan, but he didn't feel as if he had anything to fear. "I'll agree to that."

"Can we focus on the mission now?" Neko asked.

Iruka sighed. He knew the others noticed it, but he didn't care. ANBU were too uptight. That was another reason why he didn't want to transfer. Hunter-nin didn't have nearly as many rules and regulations as ANBU, and not even a fraction of their unspoken rules either.

"You said Shiba Yūdai was superstitious," Iruka recalled. "We could work with that."

"You have something in mind?" Inu looked doubtful. "We're not going to make up some bogus exorcism, are we?"

"No," Iruka scoffed. A bogus exorcism? He was actually surprised at how close Inu had gotten to his the true nature of his mission, even if it was in jest. "No, a false exorcism won't get us into the castle."

"Then what will?" Tora asked. He seemed more willing than Inu to hear out Iruka's plan, but not by much.

"Do any of you practise any religion other than the Will of Fire?" Iruka asked.

It was uncommon for anyone in the Land of Fire, especially in Konoha, to practise anything other than the Will of Fire, even if nothing remained of the original doctrine. The Will of Fire was still connected to the worship of karura, the humanoid birds of fire, but that was all that was left of the old doctrine. Iruka kept a close eye on the others as he let his question sink in. Inu and Tora showed no reaction to it, but Neko did. There was a distinct flutter of eyelashes, nothing more, nothing less. It wouldn't surprise him if the Uchiha didn't follow the Will of Fire. The entire clan was in a separate compound that was self-governed, for all he knew, the Uchiha worshiped Tatarigami, the god starvation, famine, death and pestilence. Iruka hoped that wasn't the case because then they would be no better than the cult of Jashin. Jashin was actually an interpretation of Tatarigmai himself, and that was why he disliked going to the Land of Hot Water during missions.   

"No," Tora said.

Inu shook his head.

Iruka looked to Neko. The boy hadn't said anything. He hoped he would because he needed something to work with, he needed someone that wasn't completely clueless.

"The sun cult," Neko said.

Iruka blinked. He had never been more thankful for the Uchiha clan. He wanted to smile. He thought the cult had completely died out. He never thought he would meet a living, breathing member of the scattered remains of Amaterasu's worshipers. He would take someone from the sun cult over someone possessing the Will of Fire any day.

"I can work with that," Iruka said, thinking.


	2. It Started with Food Pills

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks a bunch for the comments and all the kudos. I found it very funny when I read that people don't like Kakashi that much. The poor man has his reasons. This chapter is kinda slow, but things will pick up. Oh, if you see American spelling here and English spelling there, that would be my laptop that freaked out out every time I try to change the default language to South African English. Sorry about that, but this is still unbeta'd, so I also apologise for any other mistakes. 
> 
> Enjoy!

Iruka felt like there was a hive in his head. He had too many thoughts churning around. It didn’t help that Team Ro looked at him with expectant looks. He wasn’t a genius like Inu or Neko, so he didn’t have a plan for everything, nor could he come up with one in a matter of minutes. He needed time to think, he needed to be somewhere quiet. A soft rumble caught his attention, breaking his concentration. Iruka was mortified when he realised that it was his stomach. It had been almost a day since he last ate, and the small bit of dried meat he had left wouldn’t do much to help.

“Urgh.” Iruka didn’t care how undignified it looked. He wasn’t ANBU, so he didn’t have a stick up his ass when it came to repressing his personality during a mission, even the part of his personality that was Komainu. He wanted to eat something hearty and rich, like ramen. He would have to settle for scrounging food pills from the others. “Can any of you spare me a few food pills? I didn’t bring any with me.”

“You went on a mission without food pills?” Inu asked. Iruka could sense the man’s disapproval. “That’s short-sighted.”

Iruka’s lips thinned. He couldn’t help it. He had an expressive face and didn’t enjoy suppressing his emotions, nor was he good at it most of the time.

“My original mission was simple, it wouldn’t have taken me more than two days to return to Konoha, so there was no need for food pills, Inu-taichō” Iruka said with a sneer. He was beginning to wonder if all he liked about the man was the fact that the sex was good.

Tora heaved a sigh. “Senpai, I think that’s enough. We’re all stuck together on this mission. Weren’t you the one that said we should get to know each other?”

Iruka watched as Inu and Tora stared at each other. Inu didn’t look impressed, or rather, he looked bored as if he criticised hunter-nin every day.

“No,” Inu said.

“Yes,” Tora said back.

“No.”

Tora smiled and looked at Iruka. “My name’s Tenzō.”

Iruka stared at the man. Tora –Tenzō– had willingly given him his identity. Sure, he knew the real identity of Inu and Neko, but he didn’t know why the man would reveal it in such a blasé manner. Iruka noticed that Inu wasn’t impressed. Iruka noticed that Tenzō looked at him expectantly, with a smile on his face. He wasn’t very happy about his current situation – if he didn’t share his name, he’d alienate himself from Team Ro. On the other hand, it would make it more difficult to keep the coin that was his division between Komainu and Iruka in balance.

“Iruka,” he said as if he was unsure if it was his name or not.

“Unbelievable,” Inu murmured.

“Itachi,” the boy said.

Iruka looked at Itachi. The boy had a kind face. He didn’t want to see ANBU ruin that, but there wasn’t anything he could really do about it. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Senpai,” Tenzō said.

Iruka looked to Inu. He could see that he wasn’t happy with the current situation. He had a neutral expression on his face, but his body language said what his face didn’t. Iruka had never seen Inu that tense. It practically rolled off in waves.

“Kakashi.”

Iruka bowed slightly without thinking. Kakashi was the head of a noble clan, so it would have been expected to show such respect, but they were on a mission, a joint operation at that. For all intents and purposes, they were equals.

“Now that’s we’re done breaking rules,” Kakashi said with a frustrated sigh, “can we move on?”

Iruka blinked. He had originally asked for food pills, but it had all spiralled down and now they were at square one. He was still hungry. He couldn’t think on an empty stomach. Food led to brain power, which led to the formulation of plans. That would then go on to make the mission that much closer to completion. All of that couldn’t happen on an empty stomach, though.

“I still need some food pills, if someone doesn’t mind sharing,” Iruka said a bit more tentatively than he would have liked.

“Here,” Itachi offered. The boy opened his bag of food pills and held it out to Iruka. “I don’t mind sharing.”

“Thank you.” Iruka took a handful and popped a few into his mouth. Food pills weren’t that tasty, but they weren’t repulsive either. His brain started to sputter to life. “Does anyone have a map of the area?”

Tenzō produced one from his pouch and laid it out on the floor. Iruka crouched down and studied it for a moment. It was a fairly new map, but it didn’t show what Iruka was looking for. He knew it would be foolish to ask if anyone had an older map. Having an older map would’ve been of much use to Team Ro. He propped his cheek into his palm and stared at the lines and contours.

“So, what’s this plan of yours?” Kakashi asked.

Iruka wanted to punch Kakashi, he really did. “I only have a few thought, not a proper plan, and right now, it only involves Itachi and me. I’m not even sure if that will work.”

“Tell us what you have so far,” Tenzō suggested.

“This area used to have a lot of Inari shrines,” Iruka said. He could see that Team Ro had no idea what an Inari was. “I need to find one that’s still relatively good shape. If I dig around, I might be able to something left behind by the kannushi or miko.”

“How will that help us infiltrate the castle?” Kakashi asked.

“You can’t get to the castle without going through the castle town first,” Itachi said.

“That’s right,” Iruka agreed. “There might still be a few of the elderly that remember the Inari. I thought that it would be easiest if I take on the role of a kannushi that has been going around trying to revive the worship of Inari.”

That was almost all he had at the moment. His plan relied heavily on whether or not he could find an Inari shrine that still had kannushi clothes and shimenawa, among other things. He knew how he would incorporate Itachi, but he didn’t know if the boy would be willing to disguise himself as a shrine maiden.

“That might just work,” Tenzō said. “Shiba Yūdai is reportedly superstitious, right? He’ll probably know about this Inari you’re talking about. If anything, it’ll pique Yūdai’s interest.”

“What about Tenzō and me?” Kakashi asked.

Iruka let his head drop. “I don’t know. I need a little more time. I’ve been running around since dawn. I need a little rest.”

He kept his head bowed. He didn’t want to see Kakashi’s sneer and the disapproving glint in his eye. Iruka stared at the map, hoping it would just magically provide a solution to all his problems. He knew it was childish, but he wanted the burdens placed on his shoulders to lift, even just a little. His eyes went from the map up to Kakashi’s feet. The toenails were trimmed, but Iruka could see that the man wasn’t very interested any other maintenance on his feet. He frowned at that, but he didn’t think any more of it. It wasn’t his problem if Kakashi had cracked heels or not.

“This is going to be a long mission,” Kakashi started, “but I suppose taking a break won’t make much of a difference. I know you’re tired too, Itachi.”

Iruka looked up to the boy. There was no indication of exhaustion, but then again, he didn’t know Itachi that well. He put his hands on his knees and forced himself to stand. Iruka looked around. He had nothing to say. He didn’t really know anyone, and Kakashi didn’t even count because they only had sex, mission sex at that.

“Look,” Kakashi pointed to the map, “there’s a hot spring not too far from here. Tenzō, you and Itachi should go ahead and secure the area. I need to have a little chat with Iruka.”

“Senpai, how about we have a chat first,” Tenzō said. “Downstairs.”

Iruka got the feeling that even though Kakashi was the captain, Tenzō wouldn’t take no for an answer. He watched as the two left the room. Iruka looked to Itachi, who stood by the doorway with his arms at his side. He didn’t expect the boy to instigate a conversation anytime soon. Silently, he walked to the window and sat down. He took out the contents of his pouches and laid it out in front of him.

Two dozen kunai, three dozen shuriken, a few fake exploding tags, wire, an entire pack of ofuda and tags with different words written on them. It wasn’t much, and it certainly wasn’t what he would’ve packed if was going on a long-term mission. Iruka took the tags in hand and divided them up by their words. He had eight different types and three of each. It wasn’t much. He would have to use them sparingly. Iruka sighed and gathered it all up again and put it all away again.

He looked up and saw that Itachi was still standing in the same place, but looking at him. Iruka gave a little, halfhearted smile. He wasn’t used to smiling while he was still in the role of Komainu. At that thought, he surmised that there wasn’t all that much difference between Iruka and Komainu. The only real difference was that Komainu wasn’t as open and didn’t really trust anyone.

Iruka looked away from Itachi and closed his eyes. He didn’t know how long Tenzō and Kakashi would take. He took a deep breath and meditated. He didn’t do it for a particular reason; he couldn’t gather chakra, let alone nature chakra. He didn’t meditate to relax, but to recollect himself.

When Iruka meditated, he saw things. Some were memories, and others were possibly imagined things. There was a flurry of beating wings, the sound was almost deafening. The tinkling of jade drowned out the noise of the wings before a heavy silence engulfed him. Iruka stayed calm. There was a faint sound. It sounded like a gohei, a paper streamer, being waved around, but there was something else, something quitter. Iruka strained his ears. Breathing? It sounded like strained breathing. An image fluttered behind his eyes. Iruka saw it as if he was seeing it through his own eyes. His hands held juzu beads and a jade tomoe necklace between the thumbs. They were shaking, causing the juzu and jade necklace to rattle. He felt a burning sensation in his throat. Something was missing there. He started coughing. Blood splatters fell onto his hands. There was a hand on his. He could see another hand in his peripheral vision. That hand was holding something, a large ball of some kind. He couldn’t really make out what it was, but Iruka knew what he was seeing; he had had the same dream or vision for years.

He didn’t know how long he sat there, seeing the same thing over and over again, but when he opened his eyes, Itachi was gone. Iruka blinked and turned his head. Kakashi sat not too far away from him.

“Welcome back to the world of the living,” Kakashi said.

Iruka didn’t say anything. He let out a heavy breath and got his bearings straight. He lifted his hands and clenched and unclenched his fingers. He looked at them for a moment. There was no blood on them. He wasn’t dying.

“You wanted to have a ‘chat’?” Iruka asked, trying to put the vision in the back of his mind. He looked up at Kakashi again.

“How old are you?”

Iruka rolled his eyes. “I’m sixteen, and before you ask, no, you weren’t my first.”

He saw Kakashi blink, but otherwise, there wasn’t much to discern from his facial expression. Iruka didn’t want to have this little chat. They weren’t friends, they weren’t even fuck buddies, and he had every intention of keeping things that way.

“I didn’t think you were,” Kakashi said. “There is something I want to ask, though. I’ve seen you use what I thought was ninjutsu, but that would be impossible since you have no chakra. How did you do it?”

Iruka knew Kakashi would ask that sooner or later, but had hoped it would be later. He sighed and closed his eyes. He had answer for that question, well, not one he would willingly give.

“I gave away two secrets today,” Iruka said, “so I think I’ll keep this one a little longer.” He had meant to say it in a teasing manner, but he didn’t know if Kakashi interpreted as such. “How about asking a different question?”

Kakashi was silent for some time. Iruka began to think that their chat was over with, but then he caught the look in the man’s eye. It was curious look, one that liked unravelling mysteries. That was exactly what Iruka was to Kakashi at that moment – a mystery.

“Did you enter the hunter-nin corps willingly?”

“Yes, but only after the Sandaime asked me,” Iruka replied. “I thought of it as a challenge at the time. It also helped that the pay was a lot better than my current income too.”

“What did you do to your opponent in the final exam?” Kakashi asked.

Iruka was beginning to see a pattern with Kakashi’s questioning. He would ask a difficult, personal question and then ask an easier one the next. He wasn’t willingly to answer that question.

“I killed him.” He gave the vaguest answer possible. “That was one of the reasons I was promoted to a chūnin. I know because I had asked on the examiners. I want to ask you a question – do you have a problem with my age?”

“No, I don’t,” was Kakashi immediate answer. “I joined ANBU when I was thirteen, and I have an eleven-year-old on my team. Your age is something that doesn’t bother me in the least.”

“Then what is it?” Iruka wanted, no, he needed to know.

“You were a genin when you started as a hunter-nin. That was what bothered me. A genin should stay under the tutelage of their sensei until they graduate on to a chūnin.”

“So,” Iruka couldn’t believe what he had just heard, “you were hung up on a technicality – on my rank? I thought you ANBU believed that rank didn’t matter.”

“Ordinarily,” Kakashi said.

Iruka rolled his eyes. Of course, it had been something so trivial. He thought it might’ve been about who he was as a person, not his rank.

A crow landed on the windowsill. Kakashi made a motion and it disappeared. Iruka rolled his shoulders. He hoped their conversation was over. He watched as Kakashi stood up and jerked his head towards the door and then put on the dog mask again. Iruka stood up and stretched out. His muscles were stiff from sitting in one position for too long. He put on his mask and noticed that he felt a little better.

Iruka followed Kakashi out of the cave and grumble when the man leapt into a tree. He still hated tree running. He leapt up into the tree and noticed that Kakashi hadn’t started running yet. They stared at each other for a moment. Iruka had a sly smile on his slip. He was a little sad that Kakashi couldn’t see it.

“You know,” Iruka said with a whimsical tone in voice, “you probably missed your last opportunity for sex before this mission properly starts.”

Kakashi titled his head to the side. “I’m sure there’ll be other opportunities in the near future.”

Iruka liked that tone of voice. He knew Kakashi was thinking about it now. Iruka didn’t know why he wanted to have sex with the man now. A few minutes ago, all he wanted was to be far away from him. He followed Kakashi as they started running towards the hot spring.

They reached the hot spring much quicker than Iruka thought they would. He leapt out of a tree after Kakashi and landed on the ground. He really liked having ground beneath his feet. He let out a quiet sigh and watched as Kakashi started removing his armour. Iruka noticed that Tenzō’s and Itachi’s armour and clothes were in neat piles not too far from them.

“Don’t worry about towels, those two probably have enough for all of us,” Kakashi said.

Iruka nodded even though Kakashi couldn’t see it. He was too busy watching Kakashi undress. He had never seen the man without clothes. He was enjoying himself far too much to pay attention to anything else. He watched the way Kakashi’s back muscles rippled and he bent down to step out of his pants. Iruka caught the sight of something dark under Kakashi’s foot. He didn’t pay it much mind. It probably just a scar in any case.

“You should get undressed if you want to get in the hot spring,” Kakashi said teasingly.

Iruka shook his head and removed his mask. He started undid the fastenings of his armoured vest and gently put it down on the ground. He looked up and noticed that Kakashi was gone. He looked around to make sure he was alone. He crouched down and pulled a rectangular fukuro toji book from under his shirt. He stared at the dark blue cover. He was glad that Kakashi hadn’t entirely removed his vest earlier, otherwise, he would have asked after it. Iruka kept his hand hovering over the book from a distance. The book snapped open. Pages flipped passed, one after the other.

“ _Ri_ ,” he said. The pages stopped and one stood erect. “Kaori. Sayuri.”

Two kitsune appeared before him. One lay on her back with a sake bottle being held to her mouth using all four paws. It looked ridiculous. Iruka sighed. He knew he shouldn’t have expected anything else when summoning Sayuri. He looked to Kaori who stared back at him with a bored look. Iruka watched as Kaori swayed her tails from side to side.

“Can we finally do something fun?” Kaori asked, her ear twitching from side to side. “You use the sunekori more than you use us these days. Let’s do something.”

“Will there be more sake?” Sayuri ask she let the bottle fall away and roll on the ground. “I want more sake.”

Iruka sighed. He had half a mind to banish them and use the _Chi_ clan instead. “No, there’s no sake. I need you two to do something for me.”

The kitsune turned the head over their shoulders and looked in the direction of the hot spring. Iruka blinked and they were gone. He let out a groan. _I should’ve used the Chi clan instead_ , he told himself. He tucked the book back under his shirt and got up and walked to the hot spring. He still had his shirt and pants on, but he needed to deal with those two first before he could relax.

The distinct yapping of foxes echoed. Iruka hoped they didn’t do anything too bad to Team Ro. He pushed aside a bush and sighed at the sight before him. Sayuri, who had shrunk herself, sat on Itachi’s head, her nose pressed against the boy’s. Kaori sat on a rock looking at Kakashi, who now had orange hair and whiskers protruding from his cheeks.

“Sayuri, Kaori!” Iruka shouted.

The kitsune flinched and looked in his direction. Sayuri lost her balance and fell into the water. Kaori laughed, whether, at the other kitsune or Kakashi, Iruka wasn’t sure. He walked to the edge of the hot spring and quickly removed the rest of his clothes. He threw them aside, careful to conceal the book in his shirt as well, and stepped in. He saw one of Sayuri’s tails and pulled her out. She moaned and looked like she was about to vomit. Iruka stretched out his arm to set her down on the ground while she retched. He looked to Kaori and then Kakashi.

“Undo that,” he ordered.

Kaori twitched her whiskers. She put a leaf in her mouth and blew it at Kakashi. It hit the man on the forehead and his face and hair returned to normal. Iruka glared at her and then sunk further into the water.

“Can you never just listen before you cause mayhem?” Iruka asked. He knew he wouldn’t be graced with an answer, but he asked anyway. He hoped Kaori felt guilty, even though she didn’t look like she was. “Apologise.”

“Sorry, dog smelling human, “Kaori mumbled.

Iruka looked over his shoulder and saw that Sayuri was still sick.

“This is the first time you’ve summoned us when there are other humans,” Kaori said. She had recovered from the scolding quickly. “This is going to be fun, right?”

Iruka noticed that Team Ro was staring at him. “No, Kaori, I didn’t call you here because I wanted you to have fun. I need you to do something for me. I want you to go to the castle town.”

“But that sounds like it’ll be fun!” 

“You’re not going there to have fun!” Iruka shouted. “If you don’t act appropriately, I’ll summon Hironori instead.” 

Kaori sniffed at that, but stayed quiet.

“Good, now, I want you to gather information.”

“What kind?”

Iruka thought for a while. “I want you to find out if there are any job vacancies, ones that’ll get us into the castle, given time.”

“Boring.”

Iruka glared at Kaori again, who had the decency to look guilty. “I also want you to listen to local gossip, anything you think that’ll be important. It’ll be better if you leave now. I want this information as quickly as you can manage.”

Iruka heard Sayuri retch again. He looked over his shoulder and then drizzled some water over her back. The tiny kitsune looked up him and then moaned. He heard Kaori leave. He didn’t bother to watch her leave. The rustling of leaves was enough to tell him that she was gone. He looked back to the people in the hot spring with him.

“Those are kitsune,” Tenzō said.

Iruka now regretted that he had summoned Kaori and Sayuri. “Yes, they are.”

“They have more than one tail.”

Iruka just looked at Tenzō. There was nothing he could say to alleviate the situation. “They do. Don’t worry; there aren’t a lot of them around. I have more control over them than it seems.” It was true, but he wouldn’t tell them how much control he had, however.

“Is it alright?” Itachi asked, looking at Sayuri.

Iruka looked at her as well. “She’ll be fine. She’s just had too much to drink, again.”

“What did she drink?” the boy asked.

Iruka let out a small laugh. He was glad that Itachi was still a child in that regard. He smiled at Sayuri and drizzled more water over her back. She seemed to have calmed down and also stopped vomiting. He gently scooped her up and lowered her into the water with him, keeping her pressed to his chest.

“’Ruka,” Sayuri moaned. “No more sake.”

Iruka washed her mouth and then went a little further into the water. He settled against a rock and noticed that everyone still had their eyes on him. He just shrugged and patted the kitsune’s head.

“Those are interesting summons, for someone with no chakra,” Kakashi noted.

“I’m not giving away all my secrets,” Iruka said. “Besides, kitsune don’t like people. They just like drinking and playing tricks on humans. Right?” Sayuri grumbled.

“So, is there anything more to your plan now?” Kakashi asked.

“Well, not really. I need Sayuri to go find a shrine for clothes and whatnot. I was thinking of having Itachi play the part of a miko. That’ll capture more attention than just me going around alone. It also had a little bit more authenticity to the whole affair. We’ll have to wait on Kaori to see what you two can do to get in. There’s bound to get something.”

Kakashi didn’t look very impressed. Iruka just didn’t care anymore. He continued to pat Sayuri’s head and hoped she would recover quickly. He wanted the mission over with.

* * *

Iruka took in a deep breath. His chest felt tight, his stomach heavy. It was like ice ran through his veins. He looked up at the desolate shrine before them. An uprooted tree had fallen over the shrine and had caused substantial damage. The wood of the structure was uncared for, cracked and burst in places. Grass ran wild through the courtyard before the shrine, growing through the cracked flagstones. The guardian kitsune statues that flanked the pathway just beyond the stone torii gate which he stood under were faded and worn from rain and the wind. It pained him to see ruined shrines. He could feel the anguish and loneliness seep up through the ground which he stood on. Iruka put a hand on the torii gate. He closed his eyes and swallowed. He heard Team Ro standing behind him. He took in another deep breath and slowly released it. He looked up at the kitsune statues. He hoped the shinsi still remained, otherwise, his plan wouldn’t work.

Iruka reached into his pouch and took out the last of his dried meat. He snapped it in half and walked towards the female of the kitsune statues. He offered up the meat and laid it down on its paws. He put his hands together and prayed.

 _Please, shinsi-sama,_ Iruka prayed. _Please hear my plea. Guide me, reveal yourself and guide towards that which I seek._

Iruka remained in that posture, his hands together in prayer and his head lowered for what felt like an eternity. Nothing happened.

”Are you going to do that every time we pass a shrine?” Kakashi asked.

“Senpai!” Tenzō carped. 

“Kōhai,” Kakashi carped back. 

Iruka ignored them. He walked over to the other statue. Before he lowered his head, he looked up at its face. The paint around its eyes and mouth remained in patches, with some flaking off. Its bib was a faded reddish-grey, no longer the brilliant red it once was. It had a sake gourd by its feet and it should have had a straw hat tied to its neck, but it probably rotted away a long time ago. Iruka let his eyes linger on the sake gourd for a moment before he lowered his head and recited the same prayer. For a moment, there was just silence. Iruka pressed his joined hands to his mask. He felt like a fool. He had hoped that the shinsi had remained at the shrine. He hoped they would still be watching over the shrine, even after decades had passed by without offerings. He didn’t blame them for deserting it. The shrine was nothing but a rotting reminder of another era.

“What was that?” Itachi asked.

Iruka lifted his head and looked to Itachi. He could see that the boy had his Sharingan activated. He followed Itachi’s line of sight. He looked up to the shrine and to the saisenbako, the offering box where parishioners would toss in money. He looked over the box and to the building behind it. The doors to the inner shrine had burst open from the weight of the uprooted tree. He couldn’t see if anything lurked in the shadows of the inner shrine. 

“I’m sure it was just a bird,” Kakashi said. “Why are we here anyway? You don’t really expect to find anything here, do you? We should go back to the cave.”

“It wasn’t a bird,” Itachi said. “I think I saw someone.”

Iruka wanted to hope that his prayer had been heard. He really did.

“Stay here,” he ordered. “I want to check something out.”

Iruka walked to the shrine and walked up the steps to the saisenbako. He cast his eyes down and saw that there was a letter held down by a rock. He bent down and picked it up. The letter was old and sealed shut by rain and time. He was worried that if he handled it too much, it would crumble to dust. Carefully, he tucked it into his flak jacket and bowed before he stepped inside.

“Pardon the intrusion,” he said out loud.

The wood creaked under his feet. The interior didn’t look any better than the outside. There was no tatami over the floor. Cobwebs infested the corners, and weeds had pushed their way through the cracks in the floorboards. Iruka looked to the inner shrine. He had seen a few in his travels, but he was surprised at how clean it was. He got closer to it.

“Mortal.”

Iruka froze. A white haze whipped around the shrine and materialised into a large white kitsune. It floated before him, staring down at Iruka with bright yellow eyes. He dropped down to his knees and lowered his head. He didn’t press his forehead to the floor because that would be overdoing it. It would also likely annoy the shinsi.

“Shinsi-sama,” Iruka said, his voice betraying him. It had been years since he spoke with one. It was the first time he had been before a byakko shinsi. “Thank you for appearing before me.”

“Hmm,” it sighed. “I have seen your friends across this forest. They have no doubt led you here directly. No mortal has set foot here in a long time, yet you venture here with certainty. You give up offerings when most just pass by. You showed respect when most would scoff.”

Iruka kept his position. He had to think about his reply. He didn’t know what the Sayuri got up to while she had done her search like Kōichi had said, they liked to play tricks and drink sake. “I am sorry if the kitsune of the _Ri_ clan have intruded or disturbed.”

Iruka hoped that was sufficient. He kept his breathing even, but it was difficult for him to remain calm. He was surprised by his own reaction. He had hoped that the shinsi still remained, but now he was in front of one. He was happy. He felt a stinging in his eyes. Tears? Was he about to cry? Iruka wanted to touch his eyes, but his mask was in the way.

“You are crying, yet I sense no sadness,” it said, perplexed. “Remove that mask.”

Iruka did as instructed and removed his mask, laying it beside him. He kept his head bowed though he sat straighter.

“Why do I sense relief?” the shinsi asked.

“I’m a very honoured by your presence,” Iruka said. He spoke the truth. It would be foolish to lie. He was also relieved that parts of his plan would on start to fall into place. “I haven’t spoken to a shinsi in a very long time.”

“You are an interesting mortal,” it said. “You feel very much like the warriors of old, the ones that were before these accursed shinobi appeared. I will grant your wish if you do something for me.”

“What would you ask of me?” Iruka knew it would happen. The best he could do was hope it was something he would be capable of achieving.

“I ask that you take my name,” it said. “I wish to leave here without dying before I reach the bottom of the hill. That is not all I will ask of you, but it will suffice for the moment.”

“May I ask what else you’ll require of me for granting my wish?”

It moved its head to the side, silently regarding Iruka. He took in a quick breath and then glanced up. Yellow eyes stared into his. The sound of prayers and gohei filled his ears. Iruka knew this was the shinsi’s doing. For a moment, he thought he saw another shinsi float beside the one before him, but he blinked and it was gone.

“Atsuko, the other guardian of this shrine left some time ago. I wish to know what has become of her.”

Iruka lowered his eyes again. It wasn’t an unreasonable request, but he knew what happened to shinsi that left their shrines. There had been exceptions, but they were few and far in-between. He bowed his head. “I will do what I can to help you, shinsi-sama.”

“Then your wish shall be granted,” the shinsi said.

Iruka pulled out his book and flipped through until he reached the back, were a new page materialised. He put the book down onto the floor and looked up at the fox. It put its paw onto the page and a name appeared.

“Hotaka,” Iruka read aloud. It was an appropriate name for a shinsi at an Inari shrine. “Thank you for sharing your name with me.”

“I expect you to treat it with great respect, mortal.”

Iruka bowed his head once more and stood up with his book in hand. It was now a little heavier than it was before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you all enjoyed reading. I loved writing Sayuri and Kaori. I hoped you guys liked them. The part about Iruka not being able to think on an empty stomach was inspired by when I went to university without breakfast and was expected to have an active involvement in lectures that day. Needless to say, that didn't happen. See you all next time.


	3. A Little Mystery Never Hurt Anyone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks a bunch for all the reviews. I never expected so many! The kudos are much appreciated as well.
> 
> Enjoy this chapter, because this is the longest one yet!

Kakashi stared listlessly out the window. It had been a week since they started the mission and they were still in the damn cave. They were waiting on Iruka’s kitsune to return, but Kakashi had half a mind to go out and get the information himself just to speed things up. He knew it could’ve been worse – Tenzō couldn’t have been on his team, and then would’ve been without the house. It kept out more slugs and slime than he liked to think about.

A shuffle caught Kakashi’s attention. It was more a rustle, really, like a strip of cloth moving in the wind or against the skin. He turned his head to look into the room behind him. He was surprised to find it empty. He had expected to see Itachi or Iruka enter the room from the stairs, but he was alone, save for the two large trunks they had brought over from the shrine. Kakashi turned his attention to the trunks. He didn’t like them. It wasn’t because he thought they were ugly, on the contrary, those trunks were probably the things nobles fought over to possess. There was an air about them that unsettled him. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he chalked it down to the strange barrier jutsu that sealed them shut.

Kakashi had spent the last few days trying to get past that jutsu. He liked mysteries, but he was frustrated by how long it was taking him figure out how to get past a single barrier jutsu. He had probed at the trunks with his chakra and had examined every inch of them with the Sharingan, but he had found nothing. There was no chakra that he could see or feel that kept the trunks sealed.

He pushed himself away from the window and crouched down before the trunk nearest to him. Kakashi took a closer look at the carvings that decorated the trunk. They were intricate, but what caught his eye was the large fox in the centre. To him, it looked like a type of summons with the large straw hat and bib it had tied around its neck. He was sure he had seen Iruka trace something over the fox’s image. He wasn’t entirely sure what is was, but he’d keep an eye on Iruka the next time he did it.

“Oh, Kakashi,” Iruka said as he entered the room.

Kakashi kept looking at the trunk. He didn’t say a word to Iruka. He hadn’t said much of anything to him since he found out who Iruka was. He got up and went back to his spot by the window. He glanced back to Iruka, who had already opened the other trunk while Kakashi had had his back turned. He cursed silently. He watched as Iruka moved things about in the trunk and took out a stick with paper streamers attached to it. Kakashi frowned at the ridiculous looking object. He noticed that Iruka was still wearing the yukata and hakama he had gotten from the trunk. He didn’t know why he had to teach Itachi wearing that when his normal gear would’ve been acceptable. 

“You can come and watch us, you know,” Iruka said as he took out some things from the trunk. “It’s fun to watch Itachi stumble and trip all over the place. Tenzō finds it very funny.”

Kakashi shrugged. It would be funny to watch the boy fumble. He wanted to figure out the trick behind the sealed trunks, but maybe he needed to take a break from it. Kakashi put his hands in his pockets and silently walked towards the stairs. As he passed Iruka, he saw something sticking out between the folds of Iruka’s yukata. He couldn’t slow down; otherwise, he would give himself away. He craned his head, but at the same time, Iruka turned his body in the opposite direction. He had missed his opportunity. For all he knew, it could’ve been Iruka’s secret to opening those trunks.

He reached the steps and let out a quiet breath the substitute his need to sigh. Kakashi descended the stairs and took in the scene before him. Itachi stood in the middle of the room, dressed in a white chihaya and red hakama. The boy held a pair of open fans in his hands. He went through a slow yet graceful motion that made Kakashi think Iruka was teaching him to dance. Tenzō sat off to the side with a smile.

“Come sit over here senpai,” Tenzō called. “You’ve missed most of the fun, but I bet Iruka still has a few things to show Itachi.”

Kakashi crossed the room and gave Itachi a wide berth as the boy continued to do whatever it was he was doing. He sat down next to Tenzō and raked his fingers through his hair. Now that he wasn’t in front of the trunks, he found himself bored. He didn’t even have any reading material with him. He just watched as Itachi sank down to a crouch and start making swift crisscrossing motions with the fans in his hands. The gold and silver on either side of the fans created a pretty contrast.

“Apparently,” Tenzō said, “this is what’s called a kagura, a dance that’s meant to appease Inari. Itachi’s been at it for two days. Iruka’s always finding the smallest thing wrong, even though Itachi used his Sharingan to copy the movements.”

“Is that so?” Kakashi mumbled.

He turned his head when he heard Iruka go down the stairs. He frowned. For a shinobi, Iruka made a lot of noise. He was astounded by the difference in Iruka from now and when he was in the field. He couldn’t believe they were the same person. He couldn’t believe the Sandaime had appointed a genin into the hunter-nin corps either. He didn’t have an issue with Iruka personally, it was just that now that he knew he was chakra dead, he didn’t know if he could put his life in Iruka’s hands. Being on a joint mission for the purpose of using Iruka to track was fine, but being stuck on a long-term mission? Kakashi wasn’t comfortable with that at all.

“Not bad,” Iruka commented.

Kakashi rolled his eye. He couldn’t see anything wrong with what Itachi was doing, even though he hadn’t the faintest idea what it was. He wondered if Iruka liked being able to have some sort of influence over people more powerful than he was. He wouldn’t put it past him.

“You can stop for now,” Iruka said as he held out the strange stick with the paper streamers. “Now, one of your main duties will be to help me with purifications. Do you know what this is?”

Itachi shook his head. Kakashi watched as Iruka let his expression slip into a sad one for a fraction of a moment before it vanished.

“Of course,” Iruka said without missing a beat. “This is what’s called a gohei. It’s used for sacred cleansing, among other things.”

“Is he serious?” Kakashi asked without meaning to.

Luckily, it seemed that Tenzō was the only one who had heard. “Seems that way, but it makes sense, don’t you think? He had asked us if we believed anything other than the Will of Fire. It’s likely that he’s a believer of something else, maybe he believes in this Inari deity.” 

“Have you ever heard of the sun cult or this Inari deity?” Kakashi asked. He made sure that Itachi and Iruka were busy with their stick waving. “I’ve never heard of it before.”

“Your guess is as good as mine, senpai.”

Kakashi bent his knee and propped his arm on top of it. It was worth a try. He continued to watch the other two shinobi and found his mind wandering back to Iruka. Iruka was just as much of a mystery to him as the trunks. He knew that he had seen Iruka use jutsu, Katon at that, but it was impossible if he was chakra dead. That thought brought up memories of the Chūnin Exams.

“Tenzō,” Kakashi called, his voice hardly louder than a whisper. “Did you watch the finals of the Exams?”

“Yes.”

Kakashi kept his eyes on Iruka. “What do you think happened in that match?”

Tenzō was quiet for a while. Kakashi let his kōhai think it over. He found himself watching the match in his memories. Iruka had been up against a Suna shinobi. He remembered how Iruka had ran about in circles, throwing about fake exploding tags that had little effect at first, but it had led his opponent into some clever traps. Kakashi remembered that when the Suna shinobi cornered the genin, he thought Iruka was done for.

“I don’t know,” Tenzō answered. “At first, I thought he exploded, but now that I think about it…”

“Yes?” Kakashi prompted.

“I don’t know senpai. I thought Iruka was Katon user, but I could’ve sworn I saw some sort of rod protruding from the Suna shinobi. The shinobi exploded within a blink of an eye after I saw it, so I could’ve seen wrong.”

Kakashi turned his head to Tenzō. A rod? He hadn’t seen that granted, he looked down on the match from a different vantage point. It didn’t provide him the answers he was looking for, if anything, it made Umino Iruka a greater mystery. A mystery he intended to solve.

“Now, repeat after me,” Iruka instructed.

Kakashi turned his attention back to them. He didn’t recognise the words Iruka spoke. He knew a few dialects, but none of those words rang a bell. It didn’t surprise him all that much, but he did wonder how much of what Iruka was doing was authentic. For all they knew, Iruka was just making it up as he went along. 

“‘I thought Iruka was a Katon user,’” Kakashi quoted. “How does the rod conflict with the fact that we thought he had fire as his chakra nature?”

“Well, it seemed like a Doton based jutsu to me,” Tenzō said. “Really, how many people have two chakra natures at sixteen? That’s not what you’re wondering about, right?”

“No, it isn’t.” Kakashi watched as Iruka swept the gohei to one side singlehandedly while his right hand rolled a string of beads up his hand. “I just don’t get it.”

“What?”

“It’s nothing,” Kakashi said.

* * *

Later that day, as the sun began to set, Kakashi sound himself at the window again, staring out at the dark walls of the cave. He felt like being alone. He didn’t want anything to do with Iruka beyond what was necessary for the mission. On the one hand, he had the urge to pull the younger man aside and possibly go for a quick tryst. On the other hand, he just didn’t know what to think of him. His body still lusted after Iruka, but ultimately, it was his mind that won. He distrusted Iruka too much to let his guard down enough for sex.

He could hear Itachi reciting some sort of prayer after Iruka downstairs. If he had to admit anything about Iruka, it would be that he had a soothing voice. There was something about it that made his troubles a little lighter. It bothered him. Kakashi wished he could block out the sound.

There was a creak of a floorboard. Kakashi turned around and once again saw that he was the room’s only occupant. He shook his head. He was too wound up. He had to get a handle on his paranoia for the time being. If he let it go on, then it could end up affecting his judgement and that would prove fatal out in the field. He knew all of that, but he couldn’t help but feel as though he was being watched. With a sigh, he leaned out the window and looked down the side of the house and up to the roof. There were no enemy shinobi clinging to the wood, lying in wait.

“Hatake,” he chided.

Kakashi straightened himself and turned his back to the window. He trailed his eye up from the floor and stumbled back. A large white, floating fox stared down at him, its eyes fix on his. Kakashi gripped the window frame to keep himself from falling out backwards. The only thing that kept him from falling out except his hand was that the backs of his knees were hooked over the windowsill. It was one of the most awkward positions he had ever been in. 

He didn’t know why his first instinct had been to back away from the fox instead of attacking it, but he was too transfixed on it to really think about it. Kakashi took in the entirety of the fox. It was almost the size of a pony, its fur snow-white. Its red bib and large straw hat fluttered in a non-existent wind. He could do nothing but watch as it floated closer, its yellow eyes drawing closer. He had no doubt that its teeth were probably the size of a kunai.

Kakashi took in a quick breath. The fox floated down and pressed its nose to Kakashi’s foot. He tried his hardest not to kick it squarely between the eyes, because if he did that, he would lose his grip and fall down to the hard rock below before he could gather enough chakra to stop his fall. 

“You are one of them – one who ‘endures’ – a shinobi. ‘Tis a sad and ugly existence you were born into.”

All Kakashi did was blink, and it was gone. He couldn’t believe it. He let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding and eased himself back into the house. He stayed seated on the windowsill. The fox spoke. It looked right at him, floating in mid-air, and spoke to him. It felt different than when he had heard summoning pact animals speak. There had been an underlying eerie, almost surreal quality to it.

Kakashi put a hand over his left eye and sighed. He was glad no one else had seen him. He didn’t know if he had really seen that fox or not. He let his hand fall into his lap and he stared at the room. The trunks were still in the same place as they had been all week. The one nearest to him caught his attention. Kakashi hopped off of the windowsill and crouched down in front of it.

The image of the fox carved into the trunk was almost exactly the same as the fox he had seen a few moments ago. Kakashi traced his fingers over the image. It had probably been a figment of his imagination, not that he had much of one. It was probably a product of his fatigue and stress and the fact that he had thoroughly the trunk with his Sharingan.

Kakashi pushed the strange episode to the back of his mind and concentrated on the trunk. He had managed to get a glimpse of what Iruka traced over the fox earlier. It was a pattern that translated into a kanji unknown to him. Kakashi put his index and middle fingers together and started writing the kanji over the fox. Nothing happened. He tried to open the trunk, but it remained shut. He then tried every combination of the stroke order he could think of, but nothing worked.

Kakashi glared at the trunk. He was sure he had seen the kanji correctly when Iruka had done it not even an hour before. He didn’t know how a chakra dead shinobi could work on a seal that he couldn’t break. Kakashi blinked at that thought. Iruka was chakra dead. Kakashi had unconsciously flowed extra chakra through his fingers when he wrote out the kanji. It was a habit, a justified one; because that was what someone would normally do when trying to undo a barrier jutsu.

With effort, Kakashi muted the flow of chakra in his fingers and rewrote the kanji over the fox. He waited. There was a soft groan as the trunk’s top popped open a fraction. Kakashi couldn’t help but stare at the fox for a while. He couldn’t believe that that was all it took to open it, granted it took him a week to figure it, but he had solved it nonetheless.

Gently, Kakashi lifted the top and looked at the contents of the trunk. He knew the other trunk had been filled with clothes and various other accessories, like the fans and the gohei Iruka had used, but the inside of the trunk he was looking into had been a complete mystery. He was almost disappointed when the entirety of the trunk was filled with scrolls and books. The key word was almost. Knowledge was power in the shinobi world, and he had no idea what those books and scrolls would contain. There was also something else in the trunk.

Kakashi reached in and removed the object. It was long and covered in silk. He pulled free the material and looked at the unstrung bow in his hands. It was a yumi bow, a daikyū bow, not the smaller, compact hankyū bows shinobi favoured. Kakashi turned it over in his hands. He could see that it was old, but well cared for. He had never seen a daikyū yumi bow in person before. He had only ever read about them. Now that he had one in hand, even unstrung, he could see how impractical it would be for a shinobi. It was simply too big. He examined it more closely. Kakashi wondered if it was still usable. It looked like it had been unstrung for some time. It was likely that the bow would never be able to be used again unless someone painstakingly put a lot of effort into reshaping it.

He wrapped it up in the silk once more and gently put it to one side. Kakashi took out one of the scrolls and unrolled it. The kanji on it was unfamiliar to him. He had never seen any writing system like it before, and he had copied more than a few. He ignored the writing and looked over the images in the scroll. Most of them involved foxes and what he assumed was a priest or miko. He guessed that most of it depicted some sort of ritual or a dance, but he couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

Kakashi rolled the scroll up again and put it back in its place. Some of the books in the trunk looked old, like the books dating from the founding of Konoha that he had seen in the Archives once. He randomly picked on and opened it. He frowned at the unfamiliar kanji used. He felt like an idiot staring at those words. He wanted to know what they said. Kakashi sighed and put it back. He took out another book, but one that looked a lot newer than the others.

The pages fell open and Kakashi was relieved to see he could read it.

“ _An Account of My Days at Hisokawa Jinja by Hisokawa Mië,”_ Kakashi read aloud as he looked at the cover. He paused and listened. He couldn’t hear Itachi or Iruka. He assumed that they had taken a break and possibly gone out to the hot spring to bathe. He reached out with his chakra and only felt Tenzō’s within the house. He shrugged and continued reading, but he skipped through to the middle of the journal.

_Shinobi clans in the Land of Fire have laid down their arms and banded together and formed a village of sorts. Many countries have followed suit, and I assume that the Land of Hot Water would not be far behind. I find myself worried as to what this will mean for our shrine._

_In this Era of Warring States, as scholars call it, a lot of people have remembered the old ways and came flocking to the shrine. We were more fortunate than other shrines, but I fear that our luck has run out. Peace will result in the decline of parishioners. I wonder how long we will be able to last without them. We can’t expect Hotaka-sama and Atsuko-sama to remain if there is no one but my family left to remember them. My once prosperous clan has also begun its decline. I have no brothers left and my father has become sickly. I might be all that is left of the Hisokawa._

Kakashi looked up from the book. He couldn’t believe that he held a book that dated back more than eighty years ago. He wasn’t sure what to think of what he had read. He knew that outside of the nobility, back in those days, no one liked shinobi for the widespread destruction they caused. He was curious, though. He assumed the writer, this Hisokawa Mië, was she was a commoner, and chakra dead and that shinobi had wronged her family in some way, but she seemed to take joy in the war and fear the inevitable peace that would settle across the land.

Kakashi flipped through more pages. He stopped near the end and started reading again.

_The orphan that had been left at the shrine has yet to be claimed by anyone. I am of a mind to keep her and raise her as my own. She would carry on the legacy of the Hisokawa. She is the shrine’s last hope. She may change the future of this shrine for the better, for the decline has begun. Farmers and merchants flock to this new shinobi village. The farms that surrounded our grounds have been left unattended. I have to grow my own food and trap by own game. I can only hope that I will be able to manage with a child now as well._

Kakashi flipped over to the next page and frowned when he saw it was blank. He flicked through the next few pages and was frustrated when he saw they were blank as well. He was nearing the end of the book when encountered Mië’s writing again.

_I have brought about the end to the Hisokawa. I have wrought up an unforgivable abomination. In doing so, I have cursed this land. I hope Inari-sama can forgive me for I cannot forgive myself._

That was where it ended. Kakashi closed the journal. He didn’t know what he had expected from the journal, but he didn’t expect it to end like that. He wondered if Mië had performed some ritual to actually curse the land, and she regretted it later in life for some spiritual reason, or it was metaphorical and the curse on the land was because there would no longer be anyone of the Hisokawa.

Kakashi snorted at that. He put the journal away and closed the trunk. While his peruse through the trunk had been interesting, it hadn’t yielded the results he had hoped. Some childish part of him hoped he would find something scandalous. 

“Senpai,” Tenzo said as he entered.

Kakashi looked up from the trunk. “Is dinner almost ready?”

“No,” he said. “Iruka hasn’t returned from checking on his snares yet. It usually never takes him more than half an hour. He’s an hour late.” 

Kakashi let out a tired sigh. He raked his fingers through his hair and stood. He went to collect his mask and put it on. “I’ll go look for him.”

Kakashi left the house and set out running through the trees. He reached the first snare in a matter of minutes. The snare had trapped a rabbit, but he couldn’t see any signs that Iruka had been there. Kakashi cut the rabbit lose and took it with him as he continued his search. He was frustrated when the other snares held the same results.

Kakashi stopped at the last snare, which had failed to trap anything. He crouched down and summoned Pakkun.

“Boss?” Pakkun asked. “What’s up?”

“Will you be able to track the person who set this snare?”

“What do I look like?” Pakkun asked rhetorically. “Of course, I can.”

Kakashi motioned to the snare and let Pakkun do his business. He followed his ninken through the forest, noting that they were far from the parameters of the cave. Naturally, the first thing that came to Kakashi’s mind was that Iruka had managed to get into a fight with enemy shinobi. He knew it was a bad idea to let a hunter-nin go along on a long-term ANBU mission. For all he knew, Iruka had completely compromised their position.

Pakkun stopped with Kakashi next to him. Kakashi looked down at the ninken.

“Straight ahead.”

“Do you smell anything else?” Kakashi asked.

“There is something else, but it smells funny. I’ve never smelt something like it before.”

“Can you try to explain it more?”

Pakkun sighed and scratched behind his ear with his back paw. “It’s almost like a fox-like smell, but it isn’t. There’s an old scent to it, and it smells kind of like sake and tobacco too. Like I said, it smells funny, but the person you’re looking for is just ahead.” 

Kakashi didn’t look back as he quietly continued on from branch to branch. He stopped just before the trees started to thin out into the clearing. Kakashi stilled as he heard someone start to sing. 

“ _I hope to meet you soon,”_

_I always prayed as I rubbed my belly,_

_(Ooh ooh) What will you look like?_

_(Ooh ooh) What will you sound like?_

Kakashi knew that that was Iruka’s voice. He had spent the whole day listening to him talk. Carefully, he moved a branch that had been obstructing his view and frowned at what he saw. Iruka lounged against a large rock with a kiseru pipe in one hand and his fingers of the other stroking the head of a golden, nine-tailed kitsune in his lap. The man continued to sing.

_I see my reflection in your big eyes_

_As teardrops spill onto your cheeks_

_(Num nums) Come here, the food’s ready!_

_(Pitter patter) Come on, let’s go for a walk!_

Kakashi recognised it now. It was a lullaby popular with expecting mothers. He wondered why Iruka knew it so well. He leaned forward and saw that there were more summons surrounding Iruka. They were curled up against his legs; some tucked themselves half underneath them. Most of them small and red and with only one tail. They all seemed to be sleeping. He couldn’t believe that the hunter-nin was this far out, alone, and smoking without a care in the world.

Kakashi wanted to do nothing more than do down there had hit some sense into the man. If Iruka had been an ANBU, or better yet, on his team, he would’ve done just that, but the fact still remained that he was a hunter-nin. He knew that the Hokage didn’t look kindly on fighting or there being disciplinary actions carried about between the divisions. The ANBU handled their own. The hunter-nin corps did the same. He let out a frustrated breath through his nose. He knew it was quiet, but the fox in Iruka’s lap snapped its head up and looked in Kakashi’s direction with a growl. Iruka had stopped singing and looked up into the trees.

He saw that the kitsune said a few words to Iruka, but he couldn’t hear what it said.

“You can come out, Kakashi,” Iruka said. “Just be quiet, especially when you move that branch back. The leaves will rustle and that can wake them.”

Kakashi knew he had a scowl all over his face now. His first issue was that Iruka had used his name out in the open without being to guarantee that there was no one else listening. His second issue was that he had told him what to do as if he didn’t know how to get out of a tree quietly. Nonetheless, he jumped out of the tree quietly and walked towards Iruka.

“You can come and sit on the rock behind me,” Iruka said as he blew out smoke.

Kakashi said nothing but did what the he suggested. He gave Iruka and the summons a wide berth. Now that he was closer, he could see that the summons surrounding Iruka were kits. He noticed that the kitsune in the hunter-nin’s lap followed his process around to the rock, its eyes never leaving his. 

“Enough of that, Hironori,” Iruka admonished. “I told you that Kakashi means no harm.”

Kakashi rolled his eye and quietly settled onto the rock behind Iruka, looking down at him. He couldn’t believe that Iruka was comfortable with him being right behind him. They didn’t know each other, not enough to warrant the trust he was being shown. Kakashi noted that the kitsune, Hironori, was more mistrustful of him than his master.

“I don’t like the human being this close to the kits,” Hironori said. “He reeks of dog and is buzzing with chakra.”

Kakashi knew that a fox or a kitsune’s nose would be better than his, but he was sure that he didn’t ‘reek of dog’, he had only summoned Pakkun, and he hadn’t even touched him. He frowned at the kitsune. He didn’t like Hironori all that much, and they hadn’t even been acquaintances for five minutes. He knew Pakkun and the rest of the pack would get a kick out it when he told them about it later. Iruka took in a deep draw from the kiseru pipe and titled his head back. Kakashi looked down at him. Iruka blew the smoke all over him. Kakashi sniffed. It wasn’t his first time being around someone who smoked, but that didn’t mean he liked smelling of it or it being blown in his face. He was thankful that he still had his ANBU mask on.

“Better?” Iruka asked Hironori. The kitsune grunted and put its head back into his lap. Iruka resumed stroking its head. “So, why are you all the way out here?”

Kakashi couldn’t believe Iruka’s gall. “I should be the one to ask you that.”

Iruka looked down at the kitsune in his lap and down at the kits surrounding him. Kakashi saw that the one Iruka had originally sent out to gather information –Kaoru? Kaori?– was tightly curled against the hunter-nin side. “Well,” Iruka said with affection, “these new kits need to become accustomed to me if I ever want to summon them. I also need to know their names to do that. This is just a little bonding time. I couldn’t do it back at the cave. As you saw, Hironori doesn’t like humans.”

“That doesn’t mean you can just sneak off _outside_ of the parameters that Tenzō set up. Do you have any idea how late it is?”

Iruka looked up at the sky. “Oh, I didn’t realise.”

“Clearly.”

Kakashi glared down at Iruka. He didn’t like his blasé manner, especially not in the middle of a foreign land. He clicked his tongue and looked away and scanned the treeline. He couldn’t sense any shinobi, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any.

“Don’t worry,” Iruka said. “Hironori has a very keen nose; he’ll be able to sniff out a shinobi from some distance. He knew you were heading this way before you got here.”

Kakashi chose to ignore that and continued to scan the treeline. “I see that kitsune you sent out to gather information is back.”

“She got back not too long before you arrived. She was tired, so I let her sleep with the little ones. Kaori will give you her full report when we’re back in the cave.”

“Iruka,” Hironori rumbled.

Kakashi glanced over to the pair of them. The kitsune glared up at Iruka, obviously not happy about something. He found that he couldn’t care less if he had offended it, or if Iruka had.

“Don’t worry,” Iruka replied, knowing what the kitsune was complaining about. “She’ll be safe with me. I’ll let her go back home as soon as she’s done with her report. I promise. Come, it’s time for you to go back.”

Hironori huffed and then glared up at Kakashi. Kakashi glared back. He knew it was childish, but he didn’t like that kitsune. It had nine tails, that wasn’t natural. He watched as it gathered two kits in its mouth and picked the rest up with its tails. Hironori looked at Iruka one last time and then disappeared in a swirl of leaves. Kakashi blinked. He had never seen a summons do that before, but then again, it wasn’t as if Iruka had the chakra to summon them through conventional means. He heard Iruka sighed.

“Off we go then,” he said as he looked up at Kakashi. Iruka quickly got rid of the ash in the kiseru and tucked it into a pouch that hung from his obi belt. “I see you got the rabbits already. Thanks for that.”

Kakashi remained silent and watched Iruka stood up and stretched. He saw the pouch swing from side to side and eyed the small wooden fox netsuke peeking over the obi belt. He also stood and hopped off of the rock. He stared straight ahead, alert and listening for enemies.

“We don’t like each other much, do we?” Iruka said, but it left his mouth as more of a question than a statement.

Kakashi was confused and blinked. He looked at Iruka from over his shoulder with a slight tilt to his head that would give him a more bemused presence because of his mask. “We just don’t know each other, yet.”

Kakashi wanted to slap himself as soon as those words left his mouth. His mouth ran before his brain had caught up. Now it seemed like he could encourage future interaction outside of what was necessary. They had a mission to complete; they weren’t there to get to know each other. The only interaction Kakashi would prove of between the two of them would be sex.

“I suppose we don’t.”

Kakashi couldn’t decipher the look on Iruka’s face, and that bothered him. He had no idea what he was thinking. Iruka was more of a mystery than he ever was before, and now Kakashi was determined to figure him out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, that's that. I hope you all enjoyed that. I enjoyed writing it from Kakashi's perspective. I know he still doesn't like Iruka all that much, but give him a chance, he'll come around. Eventually. Alas, I won't update for a while because I'm up to my neck in assignments, but I will update some time in the near future.
> 
> Also, I heard the song that Iruka sings I'm the ending credits of the movie Wolf's Children.


	4. Fate Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, I knew I would be busy, but RL happened big time. I didn't think it would take me a month to update. Sorry about that. Also, thanks for all the kudos and Specs2 for reviewing. I can't believe this as over 1250 hits, never mind 90 kudos. It really warms the soul. 
> 
> This chapter is a lot shorter than the others, but according to my reasoning, an update is better than no update. I also realised that I've been referring to Hotaka as 'it' and that I referred to its counterpart as 'she', but I decided to make Hotaka agender, because why not? There was meant to KakaIru fluff, but I've left that for the next chapter. 
> 
> Enjoy!

Iruka sat on the floor with his legs crossed and his hands in his lap, palms up, right hand over the left and his thumbs touching. He glanced up at Itachi as the boy moved past him. He looked back down at the small sake cup filled with water that sat before him. He wanted nothing more than to kick it over, accidentally of course, and watch the water run over the floor.

“Concentrate,” Hotaka rebuked. “You will accomplish nothing by staring at it. Pay the boy no mind. He is absorbed in his task, unlike some.”

Iruka pulled a face but remained silent. He looked up at the shinsi who floated above him with a bored look on its face. Iruka let out a quiet sigh and closed his eyes. He shifted his fingers and formed a triangle with his thumbs and index fingers, with his remaining fingers splayed out slightly. He knew to another shinobi it would look like a hand seal for a jutsu, especially like the one used by the Yamanaka clan. It couldn’t have been further from the truth. While it was a hand seal, it was used in a meditative technique called Kuji-in, the Nine Syllables Hands Seals.  The one he used was called zai.

He tried to block out everything around him, sights, smells and noise. Iruka concentrated on the water, his understanding of water. Water as he understood it, was a necessity of life, a life-giving element. One of his earliest memories involved his father taking him to a river to catch fish. He tried to remember the sound of it, of how the fish splash back into the water, alive for another day. He tried to recall the smell the water gave the rocks as they were baked dry in the sun.  

He felt something. It wasn’t what he would describe as a push or a pull, but he felt something. Iruka heard it – the sound of a drop of water. He opened his eyes and let his hands fall back into his lap when all he saw were ripples in the cup.

“This is disheartening,” Hotaka said as it floated down, bringing his face level with Iruka’s. “You managed to pull together the smallest sphere of water and it only stayed airborne for a moment. Humans are meant to pass on this knowledge. Then again, your lifespans last but a blink of an eye.”

Iruka glared up at Hotaka and then dropped his eyes back down to the cup. He had another week to get as far with what Hotaka had to teach him before he had set out for the villages around the castle town. Iruka wondered how far he would have come or how powerful he could have been if his parents hadn’t died before passing on their knowledge. He barely managed to keep up as a hunter-nin with what he knew. He would never tell Kakashi, but that was the reason for him joining the hunter-nin corps instead of ANBU. He simply lacked the power and knowledge to keep up with ANBU members in a battle. He relied heavily on ayakashi – too heavily. Iruka knew that, but who could he turn to? With his parents dead, the people that knew about ayakashi or power besides chakra were few and far in between. In Konoha itself, it was only the Sandaime that knew of ayakashi, but little else. Iruka was just thankful that Hotaka was willing to teach him in the first place.

“There is a lot of water within you,” Hotaka said. “That water, however, is hidden deep within you, not unlike an underground lake that is hidden beneath the hard layers of earth.”

Iruka glanced at Itachi before he looked up at Hotaka. He hoped the shinsi could see his confusion.

“You truly know nothing then?” Hotaka asked. “I am beginning to wonder if I have given my name over to a fool. You are a respectful fool, but a fool nonetheless.”

Iruka sighed and then drank the water. He had had enough for the day and it wasn’t as if he didn’t have anything else to do. He actually had a few important things to get done before Kakashi left for the castle town. He stood up and slipped the sake cup into an inner pocket of his yukata. Iruka looked to the corner where Kakashi sat in front of a boiling pot, staring at nothing, or perhaps he was intently watching the boiling mixture for all he knew.  

He stood and made his way over to Kakashi, but paused when Itachi moved behind him. Iruka focused on the boy and then looked up to Hotaka again. The shinsi inclined its head. Itachi had improved, according to Hotaka there was less chakra flowing through Itachi’s body, but still too much for the kagura to activate. AT least some progress was made. Iruka was impressed by how far Itachi had gotten without him thoroughly explain the process to the boy. There were just some things that he felt like he could only reveal after he was certain that he and Itachi were alone. He continued on his way and then peered into the pot. It was about time he set the liquid aside to cool.

“How’s it looking?” Iruka asked.

Kakashi blinked up at him, silent. He looked at the hunter-nin for a moment and shrugged before he looked back at the pot. Iruka felt like he could also, accidentally, tip over the pot and spill the boiling liquid over the ANBU’s lap. He couldn’t believe that out of a team of three ANBU members, of which Kakashi was a captain, that he was the only one that knew how to make a hair dye from foraged, natural ingredients. He wondered what they taught ANBU in their training course because he thought that it would have been an essential skill with all the undercover missions they had to undertake. Apparently, as Iruka later found out, Kakashi never did undercover missions for ANBU, so he was about as clueless as a genin.  

Iruka took the handle and swirled the liquid around. It looked ready to him. He strained the liquid into a container and left it to cool. He knew Kakashi wasn’t impressed about the idea of dying his hair, but that haystack of silver hair was just too recognisable.

“Are you sure it’s not permanent?” Kakashi asked for the tenth time.

“Yes, I’m sure,” Iruka answered. He sat down adjacent to the ANBU. “What other alternative is there? A henge could be detected or dispelled with certain barriers that they could have placed over the castle gates. Without knowing exactly how many missing-nin there are in that castle, I don’t think it’s a good idea to give yourself away from the get-go. Even if you are Sharingan no Kakashi, a host of missing-nin would be a challenge.”

“My hair aside, do you think that they would really hire a one-eyed man as a kennel master?”

Iruka huffed and reached into his yukata and produced a paper talisman. “I’ve had some time to think about that. This should help. It’s a heavily modified ofuda. When you put it over your eye it will give the skin around and under it a gruesome appearance. Your cover story is that you were cursed and I came upon you one day and managed to nullify it to some extent. That ofuda helps to contain it and prevent it from spreading throughout your body. So, in short, it’s going to cast an illusion, so don’t be surprised if people give you strange looks.”

“Interesting wording you have there,” Kakashi remarked. “Illusion instead of genjutsu. Are you sure you’re chakra dead, because as I’ve said before, I’ve seen you do some seemingly impossible things for a chakra dead shinobi.”

Iruka said nothing. He had hoped beyond hope that Kakashi would, for once, just accept what he told him without it being second guessed or having his words twisted around to glean more information from him. He flicked his wrist and was about to slip the ofuda back into his yukata when Kakashi caught his wrist. The man swiped the paper from Iruka and closely examined with a caution that was warranted for an exploding tag, not an ofuda. Iruka wasn’t about to tell Kakashi that it was useless until he activated it because he happened to like that puzzled look the ANBU got when presented with something wholly unfamiliar. Kakashi’s eye would narrow, and his nose would twitch to the side every now and then. The best part for Iruka was the pouty form of his lips. He had never in all his life imagined that a genius like Kakashi would make such an expression when puzzled. It was endearing.

“So,” Kakashi said as he flipped over the ofuda and examined the blank underside, “Tenzō would have reached the castle town by now. I’ll set out tomorrow. What will you and Itachi be doing before you leave in a week’s time? You’re not going to teach him any more dance moves, are you?”

“They’re not ‘dance moves’,” Iruka hissed out through his teeth. “I’ve told you before, it’s called a kagura it’s–”

“A sacred, purifying ritual,” Kakashi finished. “I know.”

Iruka felt icy fingers grip his heart as he heard Kakashi’s tone. He knew that the rest of Team Ro, sans Itachi possibly, saw it all as a farce. A few years ago, he would have vehemently tried to convert them, but now that he was older, he didn’t see the point. He had promises to keep and missions to complete. He didn’t have any energy left to try and convert people to a practically dead religion. 

“The you know what we’ll be doing then,” Iruka said as he took the ofuda back and tucked it into his yukata again before Kakashi could even think about stealing it back. “Call me when the dye has cooled down. I don’t think you’ll be able to dye your own hair without staining half your face in the process.”

With that said Iruka left the room and went upstairs, happy to let Itachi practise the kagura by himself and get away from Kakashi for a while. He sat down in front of one of the two trunks leaned his back against it and rested his elbows on the top of it. He couldn’t blame Kakashi for his thoughts on what he was teaching Itachi, he really couldn’t. That didn’t lessen the blow when the words were spoken, however. He suspected that words like that would always hurt, not matter how old he got.

He sensed Hotaka before he saw it and let his head hang down. Iruka wasn’t in the mood for the shinsi’s wise insights at the moment. He needed some privacy, which was what he was used to. Yes, he had been part of a genin team with a jōnin sensei, but he had viewed them as a sort of means to an end. He formed no long lasting bonds with his team because he had already surpassed them in some ways. His sensei had very little to teach him. Iruka had entered the team as a chakra dead genin that knew enough of the Umino style taijutsu techniques that he didn’t need to be taught in that area and had a host of ayakashi to call on if there was ever the need. He never bothered to find out how much the Sandaime had told his sensei about his abilities, but he knew that his sensei had to have been informed about his recruitment into the hunter-nin corps because she would have to have signed a letter of consent.       

Iruka scoffed at the memories that bubbled up from his days with his genin team. Even though he was only promoted to chūnin recently, it felt like his genin days were years behind him. He eyed Hotaka’s hat as it bobbed around behind the shinsi’s head and got pulled back by the red silk ties every now and then only to float about again.

“I would like to enquire something,” Hotaka said.

“Sure,” Iruka replied. He wanted Hotaka to ask the question so that he could give a short answer and then request to be left alone.

“These humans,” Hotaka said and then paused. “Did the silver-haired one form this team himself or have you all been gathered by other means?”

Iruka frowned. Of all the things Hotaka could ask him, it had to be a question that couldn’t be answered with a simple yes or no answer. “No, Kakashi doesn’t get to pick his team. Hokage-sama and Danzō-sama assign ANBU into teams. I’m from a different division, therefore, I’m not a part of Team Ro. I was assigned to them temporarily for a mission.”

Hotaka was quiet for a moment. “That is interesting.”

Iruka found the shinsi’s answer weird, but he wasn’t about to ask why Hotaka had suddenly developed an interest in the team’s structure or origin. With a sigh, he let his head hang back. Iruka stared up at the ceiling. He wondered if Tenzō had searched the castle town safely. He had learned from Kaori that the Shiba Yūdai planned on renovating the castle, so they had decided that it would be best if Tenzō went under the guise of a carpenter to help with the renovations. It helped, of course, that Tenzō had a genuine interest in architecture, which Iruka was surprised to learn of. He knew people had various hobbies, but an interest in architecture was an uncommon one, to say the least. He didn’t see the appeal.       

“Would you mind keeping an eye on Itachi?” Iruka asked. He wanted to say outright that he wanted to be left alone, but now that he thought about it, Hotaka was still a shinsi, and it was still with him for two reasons only – Iruka was respectful towards it and he needed him to maintain its existence. Hotaka could just decide to leave if it felt so inclined. He knew the shinsi had that kind of power within him. “Please. I just need some time.”

“If that is what you desire.”

Iruka didn’t bother to look and see if Hotaka had left or not. He let his body sag until he had scooted down far enough for his head to rest against the trunk. It wasn’t that comfortable, but it was better than sitting downstairs while Kakashi stared at nothing and Itachi practised the kagura.  

With a heavy heart, he pulled out his book of names from the folds of yukata and lazily flipped through the pages. Iruka read each name and took a moment to admire the form of each. He paused when he came to the sheet that read: _Ha._ Gently, he traced his finger over the name, hesitating. He needed more guidance than what Hotaka could offer him. Iruka knew who he could turn to, but he was uncertain if it was safe to summon a yōkai when he already had Hotaka downstairs and there was also the fact that Kakashi and Itachi were both still in the house, albeit downstairs, but he didn’t know if it was worth the risk.

“It’s now or never, I suppose,” Iruka told himself. He channelled energy into the page. “Hayato.”

The wind whipped around him and smoke puffed up in balls around the room. A pair of wings thrust open through the smoke and gave a vigorous beat to dispel the smoke. Iruka closed his eyes and covered his mouth to prevent smoke inhalation.

“Iruka,” a deep voice called.

With rapid blinks that sent tears rolling down his cheeks, Iruka cursed his decision to summon a karasu tengu while indoors. It certainly wasn’t his brightest idea. His eyes stung and now he prayed that all the wind and smoke didn’t reach downstairs and alert the ANBU.

Footsteps raced up the stairs.

Iruka sighed. He didn’t pray hard enough it seemed. He motioned at Hayato to hide, but the bird-brained warrior stood there with a puzzled expression, well, as puzzled an expression a karasu tengu could give with a beak and a face covered in feathers. The idiot just stood there, khakkhara staff in hand and his head titled to the side.

“What happened?” Kakashi demanded, jumping into the room with his sword at the ready. He had his Sharingan eye open and surveying the room. “What the–”

“Nothing drastic,” Iruka said hurriedly. He was glad that Hayato couldn’t be seen by Kakashi at that moment. The ANBU had too much chakra running through his eye to see the karasu tengu, thankfully. “I just opened one of the books from the trunk and it turned out to be booby-trapped.”

Itachi burst onto the landing behind Kakashi and stopped in his tracks, eyes fixed on Hayato. Iruka felt all colour drain from his face and he could’ve sworn his heart was in his throat when he saw that the boy hadn’t activated his Sharingan like Kakashi had. He tried to make eye contact with Itachi, but the boy’s eyes stayed fixed on Hayato.

“Be more careful,” Kakashi chided and turned on his heel to go back downstairs.

“Senpai don’t–” Itachi started to say, but Iruka interrupted him.

“It was a mistake, but I’ll be more careful.”

Kakashi looked over his shoulder at Itachi. “You wanted to say something?”

The boy stayed quiet for a moment, shifting his gaze to Iruka. “You shouldn’t be rude to your teammates, especially one from another division.”

Kakashi didn’t say a word and went back downstairs. Iruka carded his fingers through his hair, pulling a few strands loose from the hair tie. One problem had been avoided, but Itachi still remained, and that in itself was a major problem.

“Do you needed me or not?” Hayato asked as he folded his arms over his chest, the sound of the rings on the khakkhara clanging throughout the quiet room. “Well?”

“Just shut up for a second,” Iruka said, his voice raised just enough to get his anger across. “Itachi…” The words died on his tongue. He didn’t know what to say.

“You know about the fox that floats around, don’t you?” Itachi asked as he stepped into the room.

“Yes,” Iruka answered. “When did you notice him?”

“Yesterday morning.”

Iruka pressed the heel of his palms into his eyes. He wondered why Hotaka didn’t say anything about it.

“It told me that its name is Hotaka and that it serves you,” Itachi continued.

Iruka’s eyes shot open and he looked up at the boy. “You talked with Hotaka?”

Itachi inclined his head. “It did. It said that I’m a very polite human. Hotaka said that it wanted to discuss the possibility of teaching me with you.”

“He wants me to teach you?” Iruka asked dumbly. He hardly knew enough to keep himself alive. He didn’t know nearly enough to try and teach someone like Itachi, a child prodigy. Hotaka had even called him a fool earlier, so he knew the shinsi’s view on that matter. “I can’t.”

“Of course, you can’t,” Hayato said. “Haruma-dono, the daitengu himself, forbade you from sharing our teachings with other humans not of your blood, even if he’s marked as well.”

Iruka glared at Hayato. He seriously doubted his thought process as of late when it came to summoning ayakashi. He seemed to have picked up the bad habit of choosing the wrong ones, like how he did with Kaori and Sayuri and now with Hayato.  

“I won’t,” Iruka grit out from behind his teeth. “I thought I told you to keep quiet?” He grumbled for a moment and when snapped his eyes up to the tengu again. “What did you say?”    

Iruka sighed and looked at the boy again. He was surprised at how Itachi looked like a child of his age instead of an elite ANBU. He let out another sigh when he saw Hotaka’s head appear through the floorboards.

“Tis what happens when you summon birds with sticks,” Hotaka said in a merry tone. “They caw before they think.”

Hayato glared at the shinsi but said nothing. He knew it was more powerful than he was, so he turned the other cheek so to say. Iruka wished had had that much powerful over the mouthy yōkai.

“You said he was marked?” Iruka asked. “I haven’t seen anything. Well, what I’m trying to say is that, shouldn’t I have known he was marked the moment I saw him?”

“No,” Hotaka answered before Hayato could. “That is not how you would perceive another marked human. Being human, no matter how powerful, one would have to physically see the mark to know.”

“What’s going on?” Itachi asked.

Iruka felt sorry for the boy. He got up and then crouched down in front of Itachi. “Do you have a birthmark of some kind?”

Itachi looked down at him and then nodded. Iruka squeezed his eyes shut. He had been hoping that Hotaka and Hayato had been wrong. Itachi belonged to the shinobi world, not his world of shadow and ayakashi.

“Could you show me?”

“Why?” Itachi asked.

“I just need to make sure. Please, Itachi, it’s important.” Iruka wished he had never accepted the joint mission in the first place. If he hadn’t, Itachi would’ve stayed the quiet boy prodigy he was, but there was no sense in wasting time and energy thinking of what he should have done.

Itachi turned around and pulled his shirt over his head. Iruka watched with bated breath as the shirt went higher and then felt his stomach drop when the edge of a dark birthmark revealed itself between the boy’s shoulder blades. Once Itachi pulled the shirt free, he looked over his shoulder at Iruka.

Iruka stared at the birthmark. It was roughly shaped like the silhouette of a yatagarasu – a legendary, three-legged crow – almost exactly like what he had on his inner thigh. Iruka sank down to sit on the floor. He had hoped that they were wrong, but fate seemed to have bigger things planned for the boy. The only thing Iruka could possibly do was to help prepare the boy for it.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to leave it there. I know this chapter may have brought up a lot of questions, and I kinda started explaining Iruka's power, but the full explanation will be in the next chapter, probably.


	5. Fate Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't think I've ever updated so fast before. It's not even like I have other things I SHOULD be doing. Really, there's a whole list of things I should rather be doing, but I was just particularly inspired for this chapter. I know I said there would be fluff in this chapter but then started writing it and it just never happened. 
> 
> Thanks for all the reviews and kudos. They really are a writer's food stuff.

Iruka motioned for Itachi put his shirt back on. His tongue felt heavy in his mouth. What was he supposed to say to the boy? Iruka had grown up knowing about his birthmark and all the connotations thereof, whereas Itachi had grown up in blissful ignorance.

“Do you need me or can I go?” Hayato asked.

Iruka groaned. “Fine. Go. I’ll call you later.”  

Hayato disappeared in a plume of smoke and a gust of wind. Iruka covered his mouth until the smoke dissipated, keeping Itachi in the corner of his eye while he was at it. He watched as Hotaka floated above them, the shinsi’s eyes almost twinkled with mirth. 

“Hotaka,” Iruka started to say, but the shinsi was faster and seemed to know what he wanted. Hotaka disappeared from sight. Iruka let out a sigh and patted the floor next to him. “Sit with me for a bit. This will all take some time.”

Itachi looked at the spot next to Iruka and chose instead to sit facing him rather than beside him. Iruka smiled at the boy. He knew it was a small smile, and it was meant more to assure himself than Itachi, but it helped regardless. The boy blinked, not looking anywhere in particular, Iruka noticed.

“Now, what do you know about yatagarasu?” Iruka asked.

“I know it’s used as a symbol for Amaterasu,” Itachi answered. “It holds no other connotations for me personally.”

Iruka let his head fall down, straining his neck. He had hoped that the fact that the Uchiha belonged to the sun cult meant that Itachi would know more about the other things in the world. How foolish he had been to hope. Iruka knew all that separated the Uchiha from the rest of Konoha was the fact that they had different religions. The Uchiha were just as blind and ignorant as the rest of them.

“There’s a legend,” Iruka began, “that whoever bears the mark of the yatagarasu on them is marked by kami-sama. That person, it is said, is meant for great things.”

“Kami-sama?”

Iruka lifted his head and looked at Itachi. “There are – were more kami in the world than Amatersau and Inari. There used to be hundreds, maybe even thousands of them.”

“Did they die?” Itachi asked. “Is it even possible for god-like beings like these kami to die?”  

Iruka pinched the bridge of his nose. He chose the wrong topic to start off with. Why didn’t that surprise him? Iruka broke eye contact with the boy and closed his eyes. He didn’t know if he could tell Itachi the truth. The boy may be marked, but that didn’t mean that Iruka had to trust him. Other than there being a trust issue, Iruka didn’t think Itachi would be able to handle the truth. The boy was only eleven, and with on previous exposure to these things.

“They aren’t god-like, Itachi,” Iruka said. If there was one thing he would instil in Itachi now, it would be to respect the kami. “The history of the kami is a long and complicated one, but they created this plane, they shaped our world. They used to be an integral part of the lives of humans. They may be gone, and there are few that remember them, but you will respect them. I will refuse to teach you if you can’t understand that.”

Iruka huffed. Itachi looked at him with a curious look on his face. “I’m sorry if I offended you. I’ll try to be more respectful in the future. I would like to ask one more question.”

“Sure.”

“Doesn’t this make you feel isolated from the rest of the village?” Itachi asked. “I think that that’s what’s wrong with my clan. We’re isolated from rest of Konoha, not just physically, but philosophically too. You saw how Taichō and Tenzō-senpai reacted to your question. Konoha relies on the Will of Fire.”

Iruka sighed and silently cursed the boy. “It’s not that simple.” He wanted to leave it at that, but he knew that Itachi wouldn’t accept that kind of answer. “I grew up in a household that held the same beliefs I do, so I always had someone to talk to that could understand my point of view. Growing up, I never felt isolated until my parents died. A few years ago, it bothered me that I was surrounded by nothing but the Will of Fire. Now, I just don’t care what other people believe. All that matters is what I believe. You have an entire clan with the same ideology, Itachi, it’s ok to fall back on them. That’s what family is for. The village, unity, that’s important, but family is just as important.”

Itachi didn’t look entirely convinced, but at least there was a pensive glint in his eyes. Iruka would settle for that. He let the boy think over his words for a while. Iruka turned around and opened the trunk bearing Hotaka’s image. A few days ago, when he had been going through the documents, he had come across a good instructional guide to the basics of using the power. He returned to his original position in front of Itachi and rolled open the scroll on the floor between the two of them. It was a rather large scroll, but it mostly held pictures in it with a few lines of text accompanying each image.  

“Let’s move on for now,” Iruka said. “What do you think I was trying to teach these past few weeks?”

“Precise chakra control. I noticed that the less chakra I had circulating, the more pleased you looked.”

“Not really.” Iruka pulled the scroll to move it along. The end of the scroll was now too far away for him to reach over and push it open any further. “The whole point was to have you have little to no chakra circulating. Nothing will work if you have chakra gathered or concentrated to an area on your body.”

It was the first time Iruka had seen Itachi bewildered, it probably a once–and–never–again occurrence. He couldn’t help but find that expression cute. Itachi was an eleven-year-old after all. He frowned when he looked down at the scroll. He could’ve sworn he had taken the right one. He didn’t remember the image he wanted being that deep into the scroll.

“How will anything work if I don’t use chakra?” Itachi asked.

Iruka made a nonsensical sound as he searched for the image. “Chakra isn’t the only power there is in this world. It’s only the most widespread one right now. Humans didn’t always use chakra you know. Chakra didn’t exist over a thousand years ago. What I’m going to teach you, it doesn’t work with chakra. Why do you think you saw Hayato and Kakashi didn’t?”

Itachi looked over to where he and Kakashi had entered the room earlier. “Kakashi had been using his Sharingan.”

“Correct,” Iruka replied. “Using something like the Sharingan requires chakra.”

“Then, if he hadn’t activated it, he would have seen the creature?”

“Yes.”

“Then why was I the only one to notice Hotaka?” Itachi asked.

Iruka sighed. “Hotaka is a shinsi, a byakko shinsi – a sacred, powerful spirit that serves Inari-sama. Even other chakra dead people wouldn’t be able to see it. You can see Hotaka because you’re marked.”

“I see.”

“Ah, here it is,” Iruka exclaimed.

He had finally found the image he wanted. He pulled the scroll further up so that it was between him and Itachi. A simple figure sat cross-legged, with waving lines around it, and its body divided in half, one-half darker than the other.

“Now, what does this look like to you?” Iruka asked.

“It looks like he’s meditating, but I can’t read the writing,” Itachi said.

“Don’t worry about the writing. You’re not entirely wrong with the meditating idea, but there’s more going on. It’s showing us how to draw in nature energy.”

“Like Sage Arts?” Itachi asked, almost eagerly.

“Almost,” Iruka said with a smile. “There is a difference. You can’t use chakra while trying to gather nature energy. The reason why there are so few Sages in the world is because it’s very dangerous to mix the two. The only season shinobi succeed is because of the toads at Mount Myoboku and whoever helped the Shodai Hokage, helped them mould the two together. Even with that, it’s a risky business. Sages only draw on one element of nature energy, and minimally at that.”

“Think of oil and water,” Iruka said. “When you’re cooking, you use more water than you do oil. Water is the Sage’s chakra, and the oil is the nature energy. If you whisk them together, they’ll combine for a while, but once the swirling settles down, they’ll separate again. Sage Arts are still heavily chakra based techniques. The nature energy coats over their chakra for a little while before it slips right off again. Gathering nature energy isn’t just about sitting there in a meditative state. You have to be in balance within yourself and understand what you’re doing.”

“You keep on referring to it as ‘power’ or just nature energy. Doesn’t it have a proper name?” Itachi asked.

Iruka grumbled. “No. Not that I’m aware of. If there is a proper name for it, my father took it to the grave with him. Don’t bother asking ayakashi or shinsi either. They never cared much for human labels.”

Iruka had more he wanted to say but he remained silent and just looked at Itachi. He still had trouble with the fact that they had allowed an eleven-year-old in ANBU. The boy might be a genius, but the boy still had the emotional intelligence of an eleven-year-old. He was afraid on Itachi’s behalf. He didn’t want to see this quiet, gentle boy harmed by a dark lifestyle. Perhaps he had to proceed with these lessons slowly. He didn’t want to scare Itachi away with information he wasn’t ready for yet.

“I think that’s all we’ll talk about today,” Iruka announced. “We can do this more freely when Kakashi leaves tomorrow.”

Itachi inclined his head and then got up. Iruka watched as the boy disappeared down the stairs. He let out a great sigh. That had not been what he had planned on happening. He knew it was his own fault. He was the idiot for summoning a karasu tengu indoors. Really, what had he been thinking? Iruka shook his head and the dropped his head into his hands. He was just glad that Hotaka had been around. He knew that Hayato would have killed Itachi if that bird brain even got the slightest inkling that he had been teaching the boy kenjutsu. How would he have explained that to Kakashi, let alone the Hokage and the entirety of the Uchiha clan? He shuddered at the thought.

Iruka looked out the window. He had no sense of time in the house. The only light source in the house came from the scattered oil lamps placed at random intervals on the floor. He had no idea how long he had been talking to Itachi. It felt like an eternity to him. He placed his hands on his knees and stood up. While he was at it, he stretched out his sore muscles. He had done a lot of sitting today, and his muscles weren’t used to it.

Iruka went downstairs. He had a feeling that Kakashi would conveniently forget about the dye. Whether the man liked it or not, Iruka was going to dye his hair. He wasn’t surprised to see Kakashi in front of the fire, sharpening his weapons. The soft sounds of the whetstone against steel was a nice sort of white noise. Iruka walked to the container. The liquid was still warm. He sat down across from Kakashi and watched him sharpen his ninjatō.

“Any sharper and you’ll be splitting hairs,” Iruka joked.

“That’s the point,” Kakashi answered. “No use having a dull weapon.”

Iruka grumbled under his breath. He took the container of dye in hand and swirled it around. It would be ready to use in another ten minutes or so. He noticed the rolled towel next to Kakashi. Iruka pulled a fine toothed comb from his pocket and a pair of rubber gloves. He put the items on the floor and then just stared at the smooth strokes Kakashi made with the whetstone along his blade.

A crackle from the fire caused Iruka to blink. One second he was looking at Kakashi and the next, his vision was blurred, but he could make out that there was still someone sitting across from him. All he could see were colours. Had the fire always been so large? That was maybe just due to his blurred vision, but there was something off about what he saw. There was something behind Kakashi, he was sure of it, but he couldn’t make out what it was. The only thing he could see was that the shapes were brown, but one was darker than the other one, or maybe one of them was black? He couldn’t be too sure. Either way, it was strange, even for him.

Iruka blinked again and his vision was back to normal. Kakashi sat there, unaware of what Iruka had just experienced, sharpening his sword. He swallowed and looked around. There was nothing behind the other shinobi or anywhere else in the room. That reminded him.

“Where’s Itachi?” Iruka asked. He couldn’t believe he had forgotten about the boy.

“He said he was just going to sit outside for a while,” Kakashi answered. “I don’t know what you two talked about, but he seemed… thoughtful.”

“Did you listen in on our conversation?” Iruka knew that was a stupid thing to ask a shinobi because what kind of shinobi would ever admit to that? On the other hand, he needed to know if any damage control was necessary.

“No,” was all he got.

Iruka eyed Kakashi. He didn’t know if he could believe such a simple, quick answer. Then again, he was sure Itachi would have said something if Kakashi had been listening in. Perhaps. Perhaps not. Itachi was a member of Team Ro, Kakashi’s team. The boy had no reason to place Iruka before his captain. At least, that’s what Iruka thought anyway.

With the dye cool, Iruka waited for Kakashi to finish sharpening his sword before he pulled on the rubber gloves. Iruka watched as the man sheathed the ninjatō. Once he was use Kakashi was done, he got up.

“Time to dye your hair,” he said.

Kakashi huffed but remained seated. Iruka got behind him and got down onto his knees. Due to their height difference, Iruka had no choice but to remain on his knees, because if he sat down, he’d have to reach up and he wouldn’t be able to see the top of the man’s head. He could see how tense Kakashi was. The man’s back and shoulder muscles were taut and set. Iruka knew that Kakashi didn’t really like the fact that he had to be behind him. Really, he could understand that, but there was nothing he could do about that. He got the feeling that a few soft spoken assurances would only annoy Kakashi. He grabbed the towel and draped it over Kakashi’s shoulders. He took the container and poured a dollop of the dye onto the head of silver hair. Iruka let it stay there for a moment before he combed it through.

There was a thick silence between them. The only sound came from the occasional crackle of the fire. Iruka worked the dye through Kakashi’s hair, but he knew that he would have to dye it a second time to get a darker colour; fortunately there was more than enough dye for that. He was unaware that his fingers brushed the side of Kakashi’s neck every now and then. He was also unaware of the sniff the man made every time that happened. He was too focused on not getting dye all over Kakashi’s face and neck.

The silence stretched on. Iruka put the comb down and sat down. His knees ached. Now they just had to wait for the dye to dry so that they could rinse Kakashi’s hair and repeat the process. He looked down from the nape of Kakashi’s neck to the small of his back. It was the first time he had ever been this close to him while the other had his back turned. Iruka knew that this was a big deal for Kakashi. His eyes travelled back up and zeroed in on a small tuft of silver hair.

“Ah, I missed a spot,” Iruka said as he sat back up, a hand on Kakashi’s shoulder to support himself.  

Before Iruka even had the comb in his hand again, Kakashi had grabbed his wrist and forced him back. He realised that he was lying on the floor with his legs half tucked under him and Kakashi hovering over him. The towel hung down from the man’s neck in a way that blocked out everything from Iruka’s line of sight but Kakashi’s face. Of course, Kakashi had chosen the largest towel. Iruka felt like a curtain had closed around him. He had never been this close to Kakashi before. Yes, they had been close, they had had sex before after all, but this was different. This was more personal. The masks were gone, just like the armour. They were facing each other, face-to-face. It was a strange sight to behold – Kakashi, barefaced and staring down at him with a head of newly dyed dark hair.

Iruka took in a breath and was almost overwhelmed by the cocoon of scent the towel had already created. All he could smell was Kakashi’s skin and the dye. It was intimate and Iruka didn’t like it. Kakashi looked down at with an indifferent expression as if he did this all the time. He held his breath as Kakashi leant in, mouth parting. Iruka was surprised to notice that the man had sharp incisors and canines. Maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised. There wasn’t a single dog summoner he knew that didn’t have teeth like that.    

It lasted but a moment and Kakashi closed his mouth and pulled back, eye cast away. Iruka turned his head and with his free hand he lifted the towel to breathe in non-Kakashi scented air. He was glad when the man got off of him and sat down on the floor beside him. Iruka contemplated whether or not he should remain laying on his back or not.

Iruka knew better than to bring up what had just occurred. He stayed quiet and sat up. He pulled off his rubber gloves and put them by the comb. He needed some fresh air. Iruka grabbed his ninjatō that was near the door and made to exit the cave. Kakashi didn’t stop him, not he had expected the man to.

Carefully, Iruka walked through the dark cave until he reached the entrance. He stayed at the lip of the entrance, giving his eyes the chance to adjust to the sunlight. Once he was sure he wouldn’t be blinded when he left the shadow of the cave, Iruka ventured out into the forest. He wouldn’t go far; he would even stay within the parameters around the cave. He just needed to get away from Kakashi for a while.

He went due south of the cave. Iruka knew that there was a particularly dense copse of trees there. He walked at a leisurely pace. He listened to the sounds of the forest. It helped to distract him, but every now and then, he mind would wonder back to Kakashi.

_Was he about to kiss me?_ Iruka asked himself. If he hadn’t seen it, he would have thought it was impossible. Iruka didn’t want to think about the possibility of what could have happened. It just wasn’t right. They didn’t really like each other, there was no reason to. Well, they had gotten along better when they were just Inu and Komainu. The again, there was the hint that Kakashi had dropped the day they had all gone to the hot spring, and then again when Kakashi had found him with Hironori. _We just don’t know each other, yet,_ that was what Kakashi had said. Iruka didn’t think he would be able to get himself to know Kakashi better. Kakashi was only three years older but he seemed like an old and lost soul. He didn’t want to get dragged into that. He had other things he needed to do.

The trees and shrubbery grew denser. Iruka looked over his shoulder. No one was behind him, not even Hotaka. That was good. He reached into his yukata and froze. His book wasn’t there. Iruka felt like rushing back to the cave to go get it. It wasn’t something you just casually left lying around. The fact that he would have to walk past Kakashi stopped him from running over to the cave. He was sure that it was safe by the trunks. Hotaka would keep an eye on it, hopefully. It wasn’t as if Kakashi could use it.

Iruka sat down by the base of a tree. He carded his fingers through the wild grass that grew beside him. He wanted to talk to someone. He didn’t feel like going through the effort of summoning Hayato again. Besides, if he did that, there was no stopping the karasu tengu from bringing a few friends along this time. One bird brain was enough for him. He eyed some wild flowers that grew not too far from him. They were pretty.

“I haven’t called Tsubame in a while,” Iruka said aloud.

Iruka got up and started looking around for a broken branch. A searched a while, but he eventually found one. Next, he looked for a relatively grass free area, big enough at least for him to draw the seal. Without his book on him, he had to physically draw the seal and make a blood offering to summon a yōkai. Iruka found a dirt patch not too far outside of the parameter and started drawing with the end of his broken branch.

It was an intricate seal and it was time-consuming, but Iruka enjoyed drawing it. It took his mind off of Kakashi. When he was done, he stepped back to look it over. Everything seemed to be in order. He bit into his thumb and let the blood drops fall onto the seal. Iruka pressed his hands together and closed his eyes. He drew in some nature energy and whispered a chant.

“Well well,” a voice rasped.

Iruka opened his eyes and saw Tsubame in the middle of the seal. Tsubame was tall, pale and clothed in a beautiful green kimono. Her long hair near reached the ground, but it wasn’t ordinary hair. The ends of her hair were tipped with barbs. Tsubame was a hari onna after all, the hook woman. Iruka took in the smug look on her face. He assumed that he had just summoned her after she had finished a meal.

“That’s a handsome face I don’t see often,” Tsubame said. She extended her hand. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Iruka took her hand and held it as she crossed over the threshold of the seal. He was sure to release her hand once she had crossed over. Iruka followed her as she walked through the forest. There was a comfortable silence between them. Tsubame was one of the first ayakashi that he had collected. He sometimes wondered if she wasn’t the oldest as well, but now that he had Hotaka, he was sure the shinsi took that honour.

“What’s troubling you, little bird?” Tsubame asked as she pulled a kiseru from a pouch. “Sit with me. Smoke with me a while and tell me of your troubles.”

Iruka smiled. He had never been able to hide anything from her. He waited for her to sit on a rock before he sat down on the ground not too far from her. Iruka set down his sword beside him. He got out his own kiseru pipe and stuffed the bowl with tobacco before he lit it with a match. He pulled in a lungful of the smoke before he puffed it out again. Iruka couldn’t help but stare at Tsubame. She had an elegance about her that he would never be able to match.

“I’m waiting,” Tsubame said.

Iruka couldn’t stop the snort that bubbled up on its own. “Sorry. A lot has happened since we last spoke, Tsubame.”

“That much is evident.”

“Right. I’m on a long-term mission with Team Ro. Do you remember them?” The yōkai inclined her head, so Iruka continued. “Inu, that ANBU captain that kept trying to persuade me to switch divisions finally gave up. I had to reveal my identity. He wasn’t very pleased, but that’s part of the problem. Missions with him were always easy and quick. Now… now he barely looks at me and gives me one-word answers. At the same time, he’s dropping hints. I just don’t understand.”

Iruka recounted to Tsubame the events of the past few weeks in more detail.

“Oh, my sweet Iruka-chan,” Tsubame cooed.

“What?” Iruka asked.      

 “I believe you have a crush on this Inu.”

“What? No!” Iruka couldn’t believe that. There was no possible way that that was plausible. It just couldn’t be. “Why?”

Tsubame smiled and blew out a thin plume of smoke that curled lazily around her. “If anyone else had looked down on you like what that man did, sharp teeth and all, I’m willing to get you would have thought they were going to try to tear open your throat using their teeth. Am I right?”  

Iruka bristled, but he didn’t say anything.

“Don’t pout dear,” Tsubame reprimanded. “It’s very unbecoming.”

Iruka continued to pout.

“This is the same man you told me about that you enjoyed on your last mission with this Team Ro?” Tsubame asked.

“Yes.”

“Then I don’t see why you can’t have sex again,” she said. “From what you’ve told me, he would be willing.”

“But I don’t want to,” Iruka said. He was surprised by his answer. He was fine with casual, one-night stands, so he didn’t know what stopped him now.

Tsubame said nothing, but Iruka knew from the smile on her lips that she had just proved her point. He wouldn’t indulge her by arguing any further. The two of them were content to be in each other’s’ company. Iruka was content.

“I almost forgot,” Iruka said. “I found another marked human.”

Tsubame paused, her pipe just resting on her lips, which remained parted.

“Iruka,” she whispered.

He looked away from her. She didn’t need to say anything more. He could see her thoughts from the expression on her face. Iruka knew that a marked human was are, but two within the same geographical area was almost unheard of, but that was not what bothered Tsubame. He knew that.

Iruka tapped out the ashes from his pipe and put it back into his pouch. He stared at Tsubame’s hands as she did the same. The content aura around them had dissipated. He knew that Tsubame would soon return to whichever city she decided to haunt now. He almost asked her to stay, but that was the child in him that still, at times, tried to grasp at wisps of the past before his parents had died.

Tsubame stood and so did Iruka.

“I’ll try to get you that information, don’t you worry little bird,” Tsubame whispered as she reached across and laid her hand on his cheek, her thumb softly caressing the edge of his scar. 

* * *

 

Kakashi stared at his right hand. He had no idea what had compelled him to act the way he did. The only thing that stopped him was the wide-eyed look in Iruka’s eyes and the sight of his hand wrapped around the hunter-nin’s wrist. He clenched his hand and then released the tension. He wasn’t sure what had been going through his mind. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to know. He was just glad that Iruka had left.

He cast a sidelong glance at the container of dye and Iruka’s gloves and comb beside the fire. Kakashi shook his head. There was nothing he could, nothing he could say to try and make right what he had done. He had invaded Iruka’s personal space. That was something that wasn’t done between people like them – ANBU or hunter-nin. The masks, the armour – it all served as a shield. Komaniu had just been a skilled hunter-nin that also happened to be a good fuck, but now it was different. Komainu now had a face, not just a set of intense eyes. There was a pair of lips, the shape of his jaw and the scar across his nose. Komainu was no longer. All he saw was Iruka, a sixteen-year-old newly made chūnin who happened to be chakra dead.

Kakashi almost carded a hand through his hair in frustration. He had to remember that his hair was wet with dye. He got up and walked around. He needed to do something, but he didn’t want to leave the cave undefended. He had no idea where or why Itachi had wandered off and now Iruka had gone out too. A hunt. A hunt would help him. Maybe he could try out that daikyū bow and hunt down a deer. It would be a welcome change from rabbit meat. Kakashi liked gamier meat, always had, but now he had a strong craving for it, not just for the exhilaration of a hunt.

With his mind made up, Kakashi went upstairs and frowned at the book that lay on the floor. He was sure it was the one that Iruka always kept close to his person. He reached down and picked it up. He quickly flipped through it. He was shinobi after all. He frowned at the nonsensical scribbled forms on the pages. It wasn’t like the strange writing he had seen in the scrolls of books in the trunk. It was of no value to him.

Kakashi put the book down onto the trunk and then opened the other. He got out the bow and slid off the silk wrapping. He rummaged through his pouch and found a ball of thin rope that would be durable enough to use with the bow for a while. Kakashi crouched down with on foot on one end of the bow he tied the rope to it. He reached over and pulled the opposite end into shape and quickly tied the rest of the rope to it.

With the bow carefully in hand, Kakashi examined it closely. It was scuffed and scratched. He inspected the knots he had made when the rope suddenly broke and the bow snapped back into its original shape. He scowled at the bow. He was certain that the rope would have held until he had drawn it back at least four times. He cut off another length of rope and tried again, but it yielded the same result.

Kakashi cut a slightly long length of rope, but nothing changed. The rope snapped each time without him even drawing it back. Kakashi let out a frustrated sound and put the bow back in the trunk. He abandoned the idea of a hunt, but that didn’t mean his restlessness had subsided.

He went back downstairs and stared at the dye. Kakashi might not have liked the thought of dying his hair, but what was done was done. He sat by the fire and pulled on the gloves and quietly finished the job, making sure not to get any of the dye on his neck face or arms. It wasn’t easy, but Kakashi was about to have someone say that he did things half-assed.    

Once that was done, he stared into the dying embers of the fire. He hoped either Itachi or Iruka brought back more firewood otherwise they would go hungry for the night. He sat in silence, thinking about nothing in particular, or at least he tried to. He had a hard time getting the memory of what he did to Iruka out of his head. He was aware of how close he had come to break the hunter-nin’s wrist. That would have been a disaster.

A noise alerted Kakashi to the fact that Itachi had returned. He chided himself for not noticing the boy’s chakra earlier. He looked up from the fire and felt his blood stop in his veins. The same fox from a few days ago floated over Itachi.

He was about to say something when the fox looked right at him and disappeared with a sly smirk on its lips. A chill ran down his spine. Kakashi had a bad feeling about this mission.    

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *dramatic sigh* I feel like I make the characters sigh a lot. Meh. I hope you guys enjoyed it. I have a few scenes doodled for this story, but I don't know if I want to add them. That'll just mean more time spent doing things I shouldn't, but I do it anyway. I draw a lot of Hotaka in particular. Maybe I'll add something in the next chapter. 
> 
> The next chapter will be a long way off. I have exams not too far from now. I won't abandon this story. I enjoy writing it too much. 
> 
> Until next time.

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I hope you all enjoyed that. I love to know what you guys think of this.


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